The course will provide a background study of all related areas of the multibillion-dollar music industry, including the evolution and operations of the record company, music publishing, artist management, live entertainment, copyright, business-to-business and consumer-facing digital services.
After its reunification, Berlin gained a well-deserved reputation as an ‘anything-goes’ cultural playground. But just as radical cultural experimentation was leading to the city’s techno Renaissance, the same urban frontier was quietly transforming into a hotbed for new business ideas around tech. Companies like Ableton, Native Instruments, and SoundCloud started in the city and grew from headquarters there into leaders in the field of music technology. They join other world leaders in music tech around Europe, like Spotify, Deezer, Mixcloud, Focusrite/Novation, and Propellerhead. Berlin is quickly becoming known as a world-class hub for innovative tech start-ups and progressive developments in emergent media. This class, open to all students, shines a light on key Berlin-based entrepreneurial figures and innovators in music technology, with a focus on those successful individuals who have launched recognized or profitable music-focused startups. The idea is for students, many of whom are aspiring entrepreneurs, to hear directly from, and ask questions directly to, established Berlin based tech entrepreneurs, in moderated conversation. In anticipation for a guest class visit, students may be required to investigate websites, read biographical or contextual material, or attend events outside of class time. Students will be expected to ask informed questions of the guests and to develop responses throughout the course of the class. All events and speakers are subject to change.
With sales of more than 1.3 billion, the German recorded music market is the third largest in the world: it is larger than the UK music market and behind only the USA and Japan. Beyond just numbers, the Berlin music business is unique: it’s home to hundreds of powerful independent and D.I.Y. record labels; it’s historically been ground zero for innovative electronic and dance music; and it’s a burgeoning tech hub for innovative software/hardware companies like Native Instruments, Ableton and Soundcloud. In this colloquium series, students will meet and hear each week from key creative entrepreneurial figures and innovators in the German and European music business. This course has several purposes. First, students will consider how ongoing economic and technological changes might be impacting the worldwide music business, as speakers discuss controversial trends like the rise of cryptocurrency, block chain and cashless systems, customization technologies like 3D printing and developments in robotics, and radical, disruptive approaches to copyright. Second, students will develop a greater understanding of the chief similarities and differences between the traditional European and US music business operations, particularly with regard to label operations, publishing and copyright, touring and festivals, and nightlife promotion. Third, students will become more informed about the D.I.Y. music business in Berlin itself, as they hear from speakers about the promises and challenges one faces in launching innovative music start ups in Germany. And finally, students will get to meet and network with key movers and shakers in the Berlin scene, past and present. In anticipation for a guest class visit, students may be required to investigate websites, read biographical or contextual material, or attend events outside of class time. Students will be expected to ask informed questions of the guests and to develop responses throughout the course of the class. Students should leave the class with a greater understanding of how the European and German music businesses work and how they themselves might make a business or sales impact on a global scale.
Examines both theoretical and applied aspects of research design, data analysis, and interpretation. Through readings, class discussion, guest lectures and written assignments, student will gain a thorough understanding of and practice in the components of good food-focused research. Topics include: articulating a research question, locating and using primary and secondary source information, conducting original research, and structuring and executing a research project.
This introductory course is targeted to all students who have a strong sense of their individual purpose and are motivated to change the world through music. In this course, students learn about social entrepreneurs, how they think, the problems they address, the business tools they leverage and the strategies they employ to create social change. Through readings, participatory class discussion, class activities, self-reflection and occasional guest speakers, students examine current issues, opportunities and challenges that social entrepreneurs and their ventures face. In addition, they acquire skills, actionable tools, and practical approaches to help advance their social change agenda now and in the future. Ultimately, the aim is to inspire and empower students to put their ideas for social change in to action and to start manifesting the change they wish to see in the world.
The spectrum of Extended Reality (XR) – encompassing Virtual Reality (VR), Augmented Reality (AR) and Mixed Reality (MR) – brings with it several opportunities for new possibilities for game design, interactive storytelling, and more. While implementations of these technologies and associated theory have existed for a number of years, the recent technical and commercial resurgence means that developing skills in critical thinking and creative aptitude with regards to AR and VR is incredibly timely. To this end, rather than studying only contemporary discourse around XR technologies which frames it as a new development or passing fad, this class will also look at more well-established principles of both AR and VR – such as object presence and other aspects of existing theory. Furthermore, it analyses such technologies through a theoretical and critical lens, placing them within the wider history of the arts.
This course will cover a variety of academic topics within the field of Interactive Telecommunications. For further details, please refer to the individual class section notes and topic subtitle.
While all art is political, not all art is designed to engage directly with policy debates. This course will explore various ways that art is incorporated into advocacy, and how non-artistic advocates understand the role of art in their work. Students will leave this course with a better understanding of how advocates think about art and artists in their advocacy, how they might partner with advocates on issues they care about, and how to maximize the impact of their art on policy debates.
Focusing on motion capture (ak. MoCap), this class introduces basic performance skills alongside 3d graphic manipulation to create real-time virtual experiences. In this class we will have the opportunity to build sets, produce interactive props, and design unique characters to tell stories or engage with audiences. Utilizing Optitrack Motion Capture system, Blender, Motionbuilder, and Unreal Gaming Engine; we will create, rig, animate, and perform as avatars.
In study after study, people lying on their deathbeds overwhelmingly say they regret five things at their end of their life: 1. Not living a life of authenticity 2. Working too hard at the expense of their relationships 3. Not having the courage to express their feelings 4. Not staying in touch with friends. 5. Not letting themselves be happier. For leaders, it’s not any different. This course unpacks each of these “regrets” with readings, exercises, meditation, deep listening, skill development and leadership theory, examining historical and contemporary answers to the question of what really matters in life, and providing the space for students to grapple with the question themselves.
This course investigates current transformations in the food systems and cultures of London under conditions of globalization. A people’s diet is dependent on their geography, although no people on earth eat everything edible in their environment, and they seek distant stimulants that their locales cannot support. Through lectures, readings, field trips students will master established facts and concepts about contemporary urban food cultures and produce new knowledge of the same.
This course bridges scholarly and professional training by providing students with an intensive introduction to the world of contemporary literature: its writers, its communities, and its organizations and institutions. Built around the English Department’s Contemporary Literature Series (CLS), which brings noted authors who are on course syllabi that semester to the NYU campus, the focus of the CLS Lab varies each semester depending on the featured authors. Some of the topics to be explored include: literary publishing, forums for literary discussion and criticism, literary organizations and institutions, and the possibilities and challenges of writing scholarly literary criticism about contemporary literature. By the end of the CLS Lab, students will have a firm grasp of the contemporary literary landscape and they will be better prepared to translate their interests and skills as English majors into the intellectual and professional contexts of the literary world.
This course provides a practical introduction to urban agriculture. Students will learn horticultural skills while performing tasks at the NYU Urban Farm Lab. They will also learn about the biological processes that these tasks manage & how they fit together in a system. Through visits to other sites around the city, students will be exposed to a wide variety of strategies for practicing horticulture in the urban environment.
This course explores the ways that we perform on and for the Internet. We’ll take a look at how artists have used social media, live-streaming, and multi-user online spaces as a site for performance. Students will conduct their own interventions with the web as a virtual stage. Note: Performance is a broad and amorphous term! You are encouraged to take this course even if you do not consider yourself a performer or someone who wants to be in front of a camera.
The ways in which writers, artists, musicians, and filmmakers have used food as a theme or symbol for reasons of aesthetic, social, cultural, or political commentary.
This course is designed to be a self contained introduction to marketing in the arts. It will focus primarily on live performing arts, but also include museums and gallerias. The arts category is rife with change. This presents enormous challenges for artists, producers, venue managers and marketers. In addition, the practice of marketing is changing just as quickly if not more so. Strategy and tactics are at more of a premium than ever. Marketers in arts related businesses must find a way to flourish in this new world, by working smarter, faster, and with great ingenuity. COURSE OBJECTIVE : ● To garner an understanding of the concepts that drive arts marketing ● To explore the competitive landscape and uncover what leads to a successful arts business ● To practically apply coursework towards a project of students interest and focus ●
This course is designed to provide both business and films students with a systematic overview of the modern day filmed entertainment business. The course covers the traditional “Hollywood System” operating out of Los Angeles and also examine the independent film model.. The course takes a critical look at the financing, production, marketing and distribution of filmed entertainment. Particular attention is focused on the various revenue streams inherent in the exploitation of such product both in the domestic marketplace and in the international arena. The primary objective of the course is to provide students with real life experiences, the practical realities, and a keen understanding of how things actually work in the film business. The course will hopefully provide students with a requisite background and orientation that can lead to an entry level position with a film production or distribution company, an international sales organization, or related support organizations.
This is a specialized EMT course, designed in coordination with the Tribeca Film Festival Board, that provides students with a framework for understanding the dynamics of the global film industry including the complete film production process from crafting the idea for a script, hiring or becoming a producer, financing the project, selling it to a studio or independent production company, building a team, production elements, post-production including music acquisition, and the selling or distribution to a global marketplace. The course includes learning about distribution and exhibition, marketing and building audience awareness, research applications, international licensing, and preparation for careers in the industry. Students attend and fully participate in the panels offered during the two week period of the Tribeca Film Festival.
The course covers marketing, advertising, and communications strategies in the new media landscape where traditional media (e.g., television, print) and the online social media (i.e., Web 2.0; e.g., online social networks, user-generated content, blogs, forums) co-exist. Students are expected to have knowledge about the fundamentals of traditional advertising methods and strategies. With this background knowledge, the primary focus of the course is on understanding social media, developing social media marketing strategies, and tracking their effectiveness. This course does not look at more tactical aspects of advertising/communications such as creative, message management, and publicity.
On demand music streaming caused a major paradigm shift in the music industry and its monetization. The Nordic countries have since the beginning been at the forefront of this technological trend and has been a testing ground over the past ten years with services like Spotify, Apple Music and Tidal. In 2023, the third year of Covid, the US recorded music industry generated USD $15.9 billions. Streaming music made up 84% of total American record industry’s revenue to a record high $13,3 billions. All major formats of music grew versus the prior year with the exception of digital downloads. On a global scale the digital music market has continuously expanded since 2008. And new market places develops fast. The average time spent listening to music each week has grown from 20.1 hours per fan in 2022 to 20.7 hours in 2023. 32% of that listening is on audio streaming services and 31% on video streaming services. The list of the most streamed artist in the world 2023 was led by superstar Taylor Swift followed by Drake. The world is streaming and the future looks both interesting and bright. We love music! It is still quite a young technology and for the users and creators a new experience. There is still little dedicated research and that gives way to a lot of strong opinions and views. Through this course we will closely follow the discourse that goes on outside academia and tap into ongoing research and exiting developments. Over the years streaming has been a hot topic in the music and mainstream media with high profiled artists such as Taylor Swift, Thom Yorke, The Black Keys, David Byrne and many others speaking out against the payout of streaming services like Spotify, Apple Music, Deezer, Pandora and Tidal. And with new ways to distribute money from the DSPs its looks like 2024 will be anything but boring. Through this course you will be guided through the history of streaming and the technology that made it possible. You will be introduced to the storefronts of online music made possible by this technology, and we will investigate how the digital marketplace can streamline both sales and marketing. Beyond exploring the effects of the technology on music and media startups, we will explore how artist development and career growth has been effected. Streaming offers exciting new opportunities and challenges when marketing and promoting music online, and you will learn specific techniques and tools to maximize your visibility, help you connect with fans and increase the chances to be discovered. You will master the techniques of the online streaming marketplace and working technology through “launching” your own release through The Orchard. This course will give you the wider historical context of the streaming economy and give you a broader understanding of this rapidly changing landscape. During this course, the students will meet guests with great knowledge and up-to-date insight on different topics.
This is a 2-credit repeatable course designed for students who have completed Intermediate Chinese II or equivalent, and wish to get additional opportunities to further expand their vocabulary and grammatical knowledge with a focus on strengthening their conversational skills and/or get more chance to practice speaking outside of their regular Advanced Chinese I/II classes. Students will perform in various conversational tasks, such as presenting, discussing, debating, etc. and improve the description and narration skills that the advanced level learners are expected to have. Students will engage in conversation in a clearly participatory manner in order to communicate information on autobiographical topics, as well as topics of community, national, or international interest.
This course is designed for students whose levels of Japanese are EAST-UA 248 and EAST-UA 249. The overall goal of this course is to help students build reading speed, reading fluency, and vocabularies and expressions through experiencing the pleasure of reading in Japanese. The focus of the class will be individual reading activity and consultations with the instructor.
In this class, we will use AI as a writing and editing tool and study the history and philosophy of augmented and automated writing. Through a combination of lectures and hands-on workshops, we will explore the theoretical aspects of AI and writing with case studies and examples, as well as experiment with different AI tools and techniques. Prerequisite: None.
Introduction to research and theory of human development across the life span. Seminal theories & basic research of individual growth & development are analyzed & critiqued. Emphasis is on the range in human development with discussion of normative & non-normative development. Emphasis is also placed on the importance of understanding the influence of normative & non-normative contexts of development, including the impact of culture, heritage, socioeconomic level, personal health, & safety. Relations between home, school, & community and their impact on development are also explored via readings, lectures, discussions, & weekly observations in the field. Interrogation of implicit folk theories as a foundation for exploration of formal knowledge of human development.
“What does it mean to make something that lasts? In this 7-week studio, we will attempt to understand the collective hallucination that is the Internet, while rationalizing the intersection of permanence, mutation, utility and ownership in creative digital work. To support this investigation, we will: – Use hands-on workshops to understand and build various forms of generating digital art – Consider the implications of storage and longevity – Have a working knowledge of marketplace capabilities, and their influence on the art that they contain – Expand on our understanding of verifiable ownership, blockchain and otherwise, and how it can have impact beyond the digital landscape Through this class, you will develop work that considers time as a critical axis, be it the longevity of the outcome, or the impermanence of the idea. Work may live on the blockchain, utilize generative ai frameworks, or manifest as a performance in a snowstorm.”
“””Portraiture stands apart from other genres of art as it marks the intersection between portrait, biography, and history. They are more than artworks; when people look at portraits, they think they are encountering that person,”””” says Alison Smith, chief curator at the National Portrait Gallery in London. For thousands of years, artists have used cutting-edge tools and resources to create portraiture, giving viewers a glimpse into the subject’s life. A successful portrait embraces technology to bring the viewer closer to the subject but is not overshadowed by it. In this course, we will delve into portraiture through the lens of volumetric capture using the Depth Kit system. Through hands-on assignments, students will learn the entire pipeline of volumetric capture, from configuring the system to capturing our subjects and final output. Simultaneously, we will focus on fundamental aspects of portraiture, such as lighting, storytelling, production techniques, and historical foundations. The course will explain the techniques and considerations involved in creating volumetric portraits. We will explore various approaches to capturing subjects, employing advanced technologies to record their presence in 3D. Students will gain proficiency in the Depth Kit system to produce high-quality volumetric portraits that can be integrated into different mediums, including game engines, augmented reality (AR), or traditional 2D outputs.”
This course focuses on designing, developing and delivering multimedia live performances via a virtual platform. The class will have an emphasis on experimenting with different possibilities of virtual performances, pushing the boundaries of the performative medium, and using emerging technologies to create experiences that allow for the unfolding of engaging narratives, and/or generate compelling visuals in real time. We will look at various examples of both online and offline performances, explore how we can apply the technologies we have learned to design performative systems, and discuss methods we can use to make our performances more engaging. Students will practice quickly coming up with ideas and performing in class. A few weeks into the course, students will propose final project ideas and then develop the performances in the following weeks with support from the instructor. The class will culminate in a virtual event featuring solo and/or group performances by the students.
“Surveillance is the most successful business model in cyberspace, maybe the most successful business model anywhere in history. But the internet is changing. New regulations, new technologies, new consumer preferences, new ways of making money, a new generation of technologists promising change. Will surveillance capitalism continue to be the dominant modality in the online world of the future? And if not, what would replace it? In this class we’ll examine the contemporary state of the surveillance industry and the technical infrastructures that underpin it, such as cookies, requests, and browser fingerprinting. And then look to the promised technologies of the future, from the cryptographic web3.0 to the metaverse to our own hypothesized models for the future of digital existence.”
Learn the history of some of the most widely known works of journalistic and documentary photography over the last seventy years through the lens of a globally preeminent photo collective, Magnum Agency. Photographers at this collective have created iconic documentary images and helped define the field of photojournalism as we know it today, setting an influential tone for style and content. Students will examine this in a variety of topics, including the documentation of war, social justice concerns, women’s issues, and sex work. Along the way, students study the business model of this agency to grasp how its differences, from other photographic enterprises, influence the work produced. We use this agency as a lens through which to address a recent history of photography, the trajectory of visual journalism, and the place of advocacy in documentary photography. We also ask critical questions of this visual documentation, assessing power imbalances, ethical complications, and more. Our studies take us through time and around the world via the medium of photography. Specific photographers we may explore include: Robert Capa, Susan Meiselas, Jonas Bendiksen, Nanna Heitmann, Bieke Depoorter, and Eli Reed. Readings include theory, journalistic accounts, history, and other critical literature. Naturally, we spend a lot of time looking at photos, and may have the opportunity to meet some of these photographers. Students visit NYC galleries, write academic papers, and produce a photo project.
Seminar for students who have been approved by the department to pursue honors in the major. Extended primary research in Communication Studies, focusing on the development and sharing of individual research projects. Students will enroll concurrently in two points of independent study under the director of a faculty honors sponsor, as outlined in departmental guidelines.
This intensive, once-a-week course is designed for students with a serious interest in writing about movies for print and digital media. Students practice various forms of film journalism while developing a deeper understanding of the art form through screenings and close readings of works by Brooks Barnes, Pauline Kael, Peter Bogdanovich, Ellen Willis, James Baldwin and Francois Truffaut. Planned class trips include a major film festival and a tour of the Criterion Collection, a film company specializing in art-house cinema. In addition to discussing individual films and film movements, we will cover essential journalism skills, with guest speakers offering guidance on specific topics like reporting and interviewing techniques. Classwork will include writing exercises, presentations and workshops. By the end of the course, students will have raised their cinema I.Q. and written a variety of film articles that inform and engage.
This two-credit course is about key legal aspects of the entertainment industry. Entertainment law is not a separate legal discipline. There is really no such thing as entertainment law. Instead, it lies at the intersection of several areas of law and applies those disciplines to the diverse entertainment industry of products and services. The course will involve a foundational coverage of the following areas: contract, advertising, protection of ideas by contract, copyright and trademark (including the concepts of parody and fair use), rights of publicity and privacy, defamation, and artist representation. This course should prepare you to analyze a wide variety of entertainment law issues at a general level. Entertainment law does not tend towards an orderly system because it lacks overriding organizational principles that would tie together its myriad facets. As such, this course will appear to lack a logical outline in its progression and instead, will examine this corner of law in separate pieces, which will cover doctrine, analytical problem-solving, practical skills related to law (e.g., analytical writing, reasoning skills, argument structure, etc.), and the particular contexts in which issues arise in the entertainment industry. Dealing with more narrow topics, such as constitutional concerns or union representation, or obtaining a much deeper knowledge of specific topics discussed in class, will require additional, specialized study. This class also helps students further develop their reasoning, communication, and listening skills.
This course introduces students to the range of mechanical engineering and emphasizes the basic principles and devices for storing and using energy, directing motion and satisfying needs. Case studies look at design issues and related ethical and professional practice issues. Emphasis is on a mindset of exploration. Engineering standards and standard parts. Teams work on and present two design challenges. | Prerequisite: Only first-year students are permitted to enroll in this course.
On Becoming is a two-part professional development course. Finding Your Artist Voice (part one) filters your fears and apprehensions so you can declare your creative process and practice courageously. The seven-week system will help you proclaim your artistic identity, theoretical underpinnings, and trajectory with clarity, precision, and commanding written language. Students will build personalized masterplans and workflows to facilitate measurable professional growth while learning to catalog and archive their work. Students will develop a working artist biography, artist statement, and fully documented work samples. For the final project, students will be supported in selecting and submitting a post-graduate fellowship, residency, grant, or open call!
Live streaming is so seamlessly embedded into our online experience. We lay in bed, on our phones watching hearts flicker across the screen as the person we’re watching greets all of the competing messages in the chat, asking for birthday shout outs and follow-backs. While the ability to live stream feels more accessible than ever, it feels very tied to corporate structures, branding and self promotion. How can we push the concept of a live stream in a new direction and rethink what a live stream can be?
“How can motion capture (MoCap) be used to archive, preserve, and share intangible heritage forms, such as performing arts, rituals, and other social practices and traditions? This course approaches motion capture through the lens of ethnography — drawing on techniques of observation, participation, and qualitative design research. This class will offer an overview of different motion capture technologies, such as 2D-3D pose estimation and depth mapping, with a practical focus on learning the OptiTrack system at ITP. We will start by covering the basics of OptiTrack and build up to other workflows and techniques used across animation, game design, and virtual production (e.g. OptiTrack to Unreal Engine or Unity).” Prerequisite: CL: Hypercinema (ITPG-GT 2004)
“In even the tiniest fragment of digital sound (especially music) there lies a multiplicity of information hidden within. Using audio analysis techniques, this data can be distilled into a vast array of characteristics that describe various different features of the sound. These include things like the loudness, pitch, or the spectrum of frequencies being detected. Through additional analysis, these data points can be used to detect higher level musical features representing things like tempo, rhythm, or melody. Furthermore, the sound and music information can be used to train deep learning models that can then make accurate predictions (eg. what a sound is, what genre a song is, what mood a song evokes). Or, we can use machine learning for generative purposes using the data to guide the creation of new sounds, synthesizers, or even entire songs. The preceding are activities that fall under the areas of digital signal processing, music information retrieval, and machine learning, a trifecta that form the technological foundation for the research area known as machine listening. With a focus on ambient sound and music, this class will explore how tools and techniques from the field of machine listening can become a powerful aspect, or even strategy, in the realm of creative applications. This course will not cover, nor will it assume knowledge of, the underlying technical aspects of machine listening, or music theory. Resources for further pursuance of each week’s topics will be provided but will not be required for class. Instead, our aim will be on understanding what these techniques are doing, when and where to apply them, and how to access and apply them effectively through powerful software libraries. This high level approach will allow us to keep our efforts directed towards creative experimentation without becoming bogged down. Ultimately, students will synthesize the semester’s work into their own creative application involving sound. Here are some examples of the types of projects this class could support: An app that visualizes audio through graphics or DMX/LED lighting to create synesthesia-like effects An automatic system for transcribing music based off of a recording or real-time input A music remixing system where tracks are automatically selected, spliced, processed, and rearranged A musical instrument that adapts to its player based on real-time analysis of the played sound A synthesizer that uses machine learning to optimize and tune its parameters A music education software that visualizes rhythm and melody for the purpose of instruction A rhythm game that derives its gameplay from music information (Guitar Hero, Rock Band, DDR) A tool that analyzes the health of a machine based on its sound through a contact microphone The course will be taught in JavaScript with ICM-level programming experience recommended. No formal training in sound or music is expected or required. This course will be a great fit for any student that is interested in sound and wants to explore it more deeply. Please feel free to reach out to me via email with any questions about the class.”
“This 2-pt course aims to provide students with the critical thinking and practical skills for creating effective and compelling interfaces. We will dissect what a compelling user experience is, apply proven research techniques for approaching and defining UX problems and apply design frameworks including mapping and testing techniques. The class format will include lectures, discussion, in-class design exercises and a final project. Week 1: what is UX Week 2: inclusive research methods Week 3: frameworks for defining a problem Week 4: understanding behavior and motivation Week 5: mapping flow and visual strategies, final project intro Week 6: testing methods and future UX Week 7: final projects”
Your web browser is a digital canvas for 21st-century artists. While being one of the most common mediums today, web space has infinite possibilities for new aesthetics. This course covers Three.js fundamentals, providing students with the skills and insights to create arts in web 3D. This course requires ICM or equivalent coding experience. Prerequisite: ICM / ICM: Media (ITPG-GT 2233 / ITPG-GT 2048)
“What is the medium of memory? In this 14-week studio class, we will dig into this question through creative storytelling. Starting from a lens-based practice, this class will introduce traditional and bleeding-edge documentary methods to inform our own varied approaches to activating archival material. Through weekly “readings” (articles, podcasts, films), written reflections, and creative assignments, we’ll explore: • how technology has impacted our relationship to memory; • how visual interventions can can surface alternative narratives; • how to make under- and unrecorded histories visible, and call into question the power dynamics embedded in “official” records; and • how we might recast objects and sites of memory-keeping, like heirlooms, journals, and memorials, as a mode of engaged preservation. Mid-way through the course, students will identify either personal or collective histories to open up to their own individual creative reexamination, memorialization, or transformation––each producing a final project with the technology and approaches of their choosing that serves to answer the question we started with––what is the medium of memory?”
We live in an age of digital production where so much of today’s music is produced with comparatively few tools, and at the heart of the modern production set up, whether in the bedroom of the studio, is software that uses MIDI. One of the most versatile of today’s platforms which can be used in production, live performance, and even as a visual tool is Ableton Live. Ableton is unique amongst the contemporary software programs making music in that it is the only one that was created by working musicians who were looking for a tool that allowed for both the seamless creation of ideas and could also serve as a performance instrument. In the past 15 years, Ableton has played an important role in creating countless tracks and records in numerous genres and the go-to software for live performance, whether for vocalists and bands or for massive spectacles like Cirque du Soleil. In this course, we will cover Ableton’s unique abilities to manipulate audio which make it the preferred platform for remixing and mash-ups. We will cover the fundamentals of the software, explore techniques to program beats, chordal and melodic ideas, as well as cover creative workflow – how to use Ableton to quickly generate ideas for producers and songwriters. Finally, we will discuss its use as a live performance tool for use with live instrumentalists and vocalists, as a DJ tool and even as a VJing tool.
During this course, students will acquire an in-depth, theoretical and practical knowledge of Digital Audio Workstations using the industry standard Pro Tools software through a weekly, lab-based workshop. Each class will be a combination of lecture and immediate application. An emphasis will be placed on getting to know Pro Tools, getting inside Pro Tools, creating sessions, working with media in sessions, audio recording, audio editing, file management techniques, MIDI recording, editing techniques, mixing techniques, backups and stereo mix-down.
Explores the implications and meaning of having a disability in global contexts by introducing students to experts’ voices, especially disabled activists, as they seek to advance disability justice and inclusion and demand systemic change in spheres of influence including education, politics, healthcare, the arts, culture, social welfare, and everyday life. Examines how public (government) and private (outside of the government) policies and practices in these sectors affect the inclusion of persons with disabilities. Students explore and identify how international trends in disability and inclusion, local cultural beliefs, and biases influence inclusion.
This course introduces contemporary topics in Science and Technology Studies, emphasizing the relations among science, technology and society from philosophical, historical, and sociological points of view. This course is required for STS majors and satisfies an HuSS General Education Elective for all other majors.
We experience screens daily in many forms: in our hands, on our desktops, on walls and public installations as we travel. This course will explore the creative possibilities of real-time interactive and reactive art on screens in various forms. Using the recently developed p5VideoKit we will create standalone installations. p5VideoKit is a new library of live video effects – building on p5js – presented as a dashboard for mixing video in the browser. This library allows the user to apply visual effects to live video from connected cameras and sensors or streaming from devices on the internet. p5VideoKit is open source and can be extended with the user’s p5js code for a plethora of visual effects and interactivity. One possible application of p5Videokit would be a public facing installation allowing anonymous people on the street to use their hand held devices to interact with large street facing screens, thereby collaborating on real time creation of “digital graffiti”. Building on ICM, students will learn how to adapt simple sketches into components of p5VideoKit so that algorithms can be quickly composited and orchestrated into more complex works. Students will also learn how to edit and share code beyond the p5js editor, use nodejs/javascript to automate deployment of installations, and remotely configure dedicated computers with long running installations. Several dedicated computers and screens will be available to preview installations on the floor and street facing areas of the 370 Jay Street campus. Prerequisites: ICM or equivalent coding experience. About John Henry Thompson: http://johnhenrythompson.com
This course would focus on the questions of 1) what makes people healthy? and 2) how can we design tools and environments that support healthy lifestyles? Key topics to be covered include public health concepts like the multiple determinants of health and the social-ecological framework, plus a little evolutionary biology; the role of behavior in health, key tenets of behavioral economics and behavior change strategies; and systems thinking concepts from Donella Meadows and others. Students will come away with a much more sophisticated understanding of the complex system of factors and forces that affect people’s health; understanding of key systems concepts and some techniques for understanding systems; and experience designing for behavior at scale. A potential final project could be to reimagine/redesign a popular commercial service so that it would have a more health-producing impact — or, alternatively, to focus on designing changes to the ITP environment that would promote better health for students, faculty and staff. About Steve Downs: www.stevedowns.net
This introductory course will focus on giving students a practical understanding of how to make ‘serious’ video games. That is, games that challenge the player to think and learn. This is a class where we will be ideating and producing playable games each week over 7 weeks using the open-source Godot game engine. By the end of the course, you’ll have a small portfolio of ‘serious’ games to show and build upon. Throughout the course, students will become familiar with concepts such as iterative design, play testing, object-oriented programming, user-interface design, animation and basic art for 2D games. They will take a design-based approach to content creation, developing a proficiency in the Godot game engine and the overall indie-game development pipeline.
Quantum technologies are the next frontier of electronics and computing. Quantum Computers, Quantum Sensors, Quantum Materials are just beginning to emerge from laboratories and enter the realm of practical application. The course introduces the underlying principles of quantum physics, and reviews emerging capabilities of quantum computers and related technologies. Coursework will include programming quantum algorithms on a simulator, and running programs on actual cloud-based quantum computing hardware. The topics will be highly technical and will require the study of scientific principles and experimental apparatus. We will cover some basic mathematical operations in linear algebra, and we’ll be encountering some equations from physics and computer science.
As the scale of human impact on global climate and ecosystems deepens, we see the need to alter our trajectory, to be more inclusive of other species in our imagining of the future. This class sets out to investigate the relationships we humans have with nature and non-human animals, to dive deep into the meaning and utility of being in relationship, and ultimately to translate these ideas into tangible, multimedia experiences that expose a larger audience to a multi-species worldview. This class sits at the intersection of art, science, and technology. It combines studio practice and research with example case studies and critical texts. Together, we will meet artists, designers and scientists who build multispecies futures through urban ecology, biology, and public art. This class is for students who are eager to develop XD (experience design) and storytelling skills. The course follows a research-driven process that results in a design proposal and proof-of-concept that can be pitched to a public arts org. Keywords: bioArt, interactive installations, experience design, research, eco-activism
In this course, students will explore the fundamentals of augmented reality by dissecting the interaction between camera, computer, and user. Each week we will focus on a different AR modality: image, face, body, environment, and object, and consider their real-world applications. Through weekly explorations, we will examine the existing affordances of AR as well as their impact. This course will culminate in a final project, and our tool of choice will be Lens Studio. Course syllabus: https://docs.google.com/document/d/1wMWVnDdzgz2bbsCNp7jRAiCe1job4glq61o67sWAP00/edit?usp=sharing
Focusing on motion capture (ak. MoCap), this class introduces basic performance skills alongside 3d graphic manipulation to create real-time virtual experiences. In this class we will have the opportunity to build sets, produce interactive props, and design unique characters to tell stories or engage with audiences. Utilizing Optitrack Motion Capture system, Blender, Motionbuilder, and Unreal Gaming Engine; we will create, rig, animate, and perform as avatars.
This course will use the open source COVID-19 Impact Dashboard as a basis to explore ways to humanize the unfolding data on the coronavirus pandemic. Students are invited to collaborate on the COVID-19 Impact Project. Students will discover how data flows from public github repositories and tools needed to visualize the data. We will review other data-centric open source projects related to COVID-19 and discuss the questions they are trying to answer or problems they are trying to solve. We will examine historical and contemporary data visualizations. Using data visualization as a scaffold, we will explore ways to support community driven mourning and memorialization. Students can choose to participate as javascript coders, p5js explorers, UI/UX designers, citizen journalists, or data science explorers.
Computational simulation and videogame engines offer thinkers and makers a new way to reflect on the question “If I can make a world, what would it be like?” In Worldmaking with Unity, students will be exposed to various theories and approaches of worldmaking, and realize their own creative visions by constructing an original, conceptual, and playfully simulated world with indie game development engine Unity. This seven-week seminar/studio course will include a gentle introduction to computer programming, 3D modeling, character and scene design, and rendering techniques with Unity, as well as related production tools such as Blender. Projects may address system, agency, narrative, generative design, critical computing, and more. Student projects created in Unity can be compatible with augmented reality (AR) and virtual reality (VR). This course is designed as an intro-level game design and development course. There is no prerequisite. More advanced production techniques such as shader language and AI might be introduced as optional topics only. More information at: https://docs.google.com/document/d/1UppRjSyFlMpGPNLMowqKmP7wwq29s5Oexnpvrj4Gubs/edit?usp=sharing
Listening is not something we do through hearing alone. Engaging with multiple perspectives, from Deaf studies and critiques of ableist hearing ideologies, to the possibilities and pitfalls presented through machine listening and imaginative sonic speculation, we will playfully deconstruct and question what it means to listen at all. Each week, readings will be assigned and students are asked to respond to prompts in the form of light-weight exercises that will orient most of our in-class discussion. Time will be spent discussing readings, presenting, and providing critique for each other’s projects in order to help draw connections between theory and practice. Through in-class presentations, we will encounter works by Christine Sun Kim, George Lewis, Pauline Oliveros and read from Jennifer Lynn Stoever, Tina Campt, and François Bonnet. The class has no technical prerequisites, and students are welcome to respond with works using tools and techniques from other classes (audio/video presentation, programming and physical computing, installation and fabrication, etc.). Through this work, we will unpack how the way in which we attend to the physical world and its inhabitants through our listening has real consequences. In much the same way our interpretation of the world is informed and influenced by factors outside of ourselves, our capacity to listen is conditioned through societal, political, economic, historical, and racial dimensions. We will disentangle listening from hearing and consider listening as a practice that begins not with how we hear sounds but how it allows us to (or prevents us from) interfacing and relating to our exteriors (and interiors). By the end of the class we will attempt to converge and coalesce our own ideas and perspective of what it means to listen.
On October 8th, 2015, a team in Ecuador identified 431 species of birds – the world record for number counted in a single day. Earlier that year in Myanmar, a scientist counted one Jerdon’s babbler, the first in nearly eight decades. In December of 2019, eBird announced that its database held over 737 million bird observations. This morning, in Brooklyn Bridge park, I counted 38 house sparrows, 4 black-and-white warblers and an ovenbird. This course will consider birding as a practice, and will dive deep into the processes by which observations become data. As a collective, we will investigate how crowd-sourced data is transforming ornithology, and will explore ways to tell stories about the natural world through visualization and more radical forms of data representation.
This course introduces the principles and practices of management. Management is viewed as a system of tasks and activities, including environmental scanning, planning, organizing, leading and controlling. Within each major task, is a series of processes, which show how to do what has to be done. Management is a science and an art; both aspects of management are covered in this course. Areas covered are management history, philosophy and the theory and practice of management planning, decision making, organizing, motivating and leading. Special emphasis is on providing the technical and managerial challenges presented by emerging and transformative technologies. Particular consideration is given to the managerial options available to both legacy and entrepreneurial organizations.
The class will focus on the many overlooked aspects of paper, and how it can be used as a three-dimensional material. We will learn the disciplines of making Pop-Ups, Origami, Paper Crafting, and Visual Design. Using these methods as a starting point, students will build prototypes to explore new ways to tell stories, inform, interact, play with, engage, and challenge a younger audience. Most classes are hands – on. The rest, dedicated to criticism (including from children), analysis, and refinement, technical and conceptual. We will discuss how they could be mass produced and distributed. Students will build three prototypes, during the semester. From these, each student will select a favorite to fully develop as the final.
This course explores the disruptions and creative possibilities that realtime emerging media provides through the lens of learning how to design, create, produce and perform in realtime. Students will be learning how to design and produce for realtime interactive audiences, understand the modern streaming media pipeline, the fundamentals of virtual production, digital content creation and the basics of game engines and other software – all in the service of delivering a more engaging and intimate connection between audience and performer. Students will design and perform 2 distinct realtime performances as well as work together with peers to conceptualize, design and produce a short realtime ‘pilot’ using the tools and techniques you’ve learned in the first two projects. Prerequisite: None. Fulfillment: Interactive Media Business Elective ; Interactive Media Arts Elective
The key events you read about in your morning twitter feed or on your favorite news sites are usually not unique in world affairs. They have a background, a context, that makes them more understandable and often more interesting. History is about everything that happened before you started reading this course description. And thinking historically means trying to make sense of the new in the context of what human beings have done before. In this lecture series, NYU’s historians take you on a behind the scenes tour of current events you thought you knew, with the goal of making you a better observer and analyst of news about the world around you.
Addresses current problems facing our society and threatening our mental health, such as the opioid epidemic, gun violence, video game addiction, legal use of marijuana, and prolonged separation of children from their parents. Students contrast what is scientifically understood with what is commonly believed and learn critical reading and thinking skills as they parse fact from fiction, reality from supposition. Given the topical nature of this course, themes may vary by semester and instructor expertise (including a focus on social and cultural issues, novel neuroscience, digital health technology, etc.).
This course will cover various professional Music Production Techniques & Strategies such as: Sampling (& Sample Chopping), Drum Programming / Drum Design, Synthesis & Sound Design, Music Theory (in the context of Music Production), MIDI Editing, as well as numerous Mixing Techniques. Over the course of the class, through the utilization and knowledge of these various skills, students will learn how to create Original Music Compositions & Productions. The primary DAW platform for the course is Ableton. While a Beatmaker / Composer / Producer must be well versed in the application of various software and hardware tools, as well as the many Production skills & techniques, they must also have artistic vision and creative efficacy. So while the course is about Music / Beat Construction and the tools involved, there will also be a strong emphasis on innovative envision, inventive mobility, and how to think / strategize like a Music Producer.
This course provides an introductory framework for understanding the dynamics of entering the entertainment and media industry within New York and Hollywood. Through live, synchronous, online meetings with industry professionals in Film, Television, Music, Theatre, Dramatic Writing, Games and Interactive Media and Casting, you will learn expectations, industry standards, and professional practices to apply when transitioning from student to a creative professional. You will also understand the specific job functions that are required to effectively and efficiently complete productions. The course aims to build a body of knowledge and information through understanding the various roles and professions that cut across all the competencies required for the industry professional to effectively function as a key member and in most cases, the leader of the creative and business team, assembled to complete a project.
The world-wide pause caused by the pandemic created a space of reflection and concern, and brought us to a consideration of meaning. As artists and scholars, we have been called to make sense of the ways we have told the stories of our communities, and been summoned to imagine a future world that is vibrant, inclusive and just, one that embraces our deepest values. As the vanguards of culture, we are now recording and creating new history together, constructed from examples of reexamined experience and awakened by new ideas. The important work of reinvigorating arts education, of imagining and designing the future through the arts, now more than ever before, must be a part of our mission as a school in a great research university. A Tisch education has always been about access to the people who create our community: the great thinkers and creators among our faculty, staff and alumni in cross collaboration with NYU, New York City and the globe. Together, we have already led transformative change, and continue to be leaders in fields that will adapt to our changing times. You too are the advocates, artists, innovators, scholars, and storytellers who collectively reflect upon the past, record the present, and imagine our future. We are co-creators of humanity’s most important re-set. Spark your imagination of the future through conversations with the leading creators in their fields. NYU Tisch School of the Arts Dean Allyson Green will moderate twelve talks with outstanding faculty and alumni of the school from a range of artistic disciplines. Create your own role in a movement to catalyze innovation and creativity to create a more beautiful, more just, more inclusive and more connected world. Please reach out to tisch.openarts@nyu.edu if you have any questions about the course.
This course offers students the opportunity to discuss trends in technology and learn about the changing nature of work. Students explore the accelerating rate of technological development by doing independent research on forthcoming innovations and sharing their discoveries through class presentations and Socratic discussions. Students analyze how we view work as a society, what work means to us as individuals, and explore possible solutions to mass unemployment and automation. Guest speakers join us for class discussions and all classes are recorded and shared.
Students will learn how technology impacts the development and changed the experiences of children and young adults. Students will respond critically and explore the relationship between children, young adults, and the environment they navigate and explore the relationship between social media and development in relation to advancing technology. Additionally, students will explore ethical theory in relation to society and innovation. Through readings, discussions and presentations, students will develop analyzed solutions for problems experienced via interactions with technology and social media. In this online learning collaborative course, students will create evidence – based solutions to solving society’s predicament with the evolution of social media.
The course covers sketching, drawing and computer-aided drafting. Topics: Projection theory—multiview, axonometric, oblique. Auxiliaries, sections, isometrics, dimensions, fasteners, detail and assembly drawings. Introduction to blueprint reading. Overview of CIM and CAD integration with other CIM concepts. A design project incorporates developed skills in visualization, drawing techniques, standards and CAD.
This course is designed for students who intend to pursue careers across the investment banking industry as well as those exploring careers in corporate strategy and management. Areas covered include equity and debt analysis, mergers and acquisitions, and corporate strategy. While the core of the course is corporate finance, the issues encompass strategy, marketing, and economics aspects. Students will learn the unique characteristics of telecom, media and technology companies/industries while building on fundamental analytical skills by examining a series of landmark and potential corporate transactions in telecom, media & technology industries to understand how TMT companies respond to secular changes and transform their business models in the midst of evolving ecosystems. Cases discussed/analyzed include: Instagram, ActivisionBlizzard, Twitch, Apple, Alphabet, Disney, FOX, AT&T, DirecTV and Time Warner.
Provides an overview of sports marketing as a component of a fully integrated marketing communication strategy. Studies the history and contemporary application of sports marketing as a method to achieve goals. Considers corporate as well as sporting property use of sports marketing strategies to achieve business objectives. Examines strategies that address critical business constituencies, including consumers, trade factors, employees, and the financial community. Covers sports marketing within the context of special sporting event sponsorships and professional sports teams as well as governing organizations, sports media (broadcast, print, and the Internet), licensing, hospitality, etc.
This course provides an overview of the key components of the global sports management ecosystem. Managing the myriad moving parts that make up the sports industry requires an understanding of general management principles and their special applications to the sports industry. From technology and marketing innovations to improved delivery systems, sports and sports-related content are one of the key drivers of the changing media landscape. The course will explore the critical elements of delivering sports content to viewers in the U.S. and abroad, taking into account constituencies which include the rights holders (e.g. leagues, conferences, teams, national governing bodies) the performers or talent (e.g. players, coaches, general managers) the media the sponsors and the consumer. For each component the course will examine the strategies, history and management perspectives that have informed this massive and evolving sector of media industries.
This course provides students with working knowledge of the publishing industry comprising newspapers, magazines, and books. It explores traditional business models and how disruptive forces including digitalization, consumer generated content, low barriers to entry, and changing media consumption patterns are reshaping the industry. By the end of the course, students understand the operations of media companies, and can speak to the opportunities and challenges facing the industry, engage in discussions on the economics, terms, and metrics, and explain emerging business models.
This is a specialty marketing course designed to provide students with a framework for understanding the dynamics of marketing several leading sectors within the leisure industry. The focus is on understanding the development and application of marketing strategies and tactics for leisure companies competing for a share of the consumers discretionary spending. Key marketing concepts such as segmentation, branding, life-time value, and CRM are examined in the context of leisure industries. The course will also cover recent activities including mergers, acquisitions in those key sectors of the leisure industry: casinos, cruise ships, theme parks, eco-tourism, themed restaurants, resorts, leisure hotels, time shares. The course will explore marketing techniques that apply across the leisure companies, including licensing, sponsorships, line extensions and promotion. Discussion of evolution, and current status in these sectors through lectures, case studies, text and article readings and project work will be included.
This course is designed to provide students with an understanding of the deal-making and business affairs process in the entertainment space, using film and television content as the primary example for what goes into cutting a deal. The course will explore the deal process from the perspective of the different players in entertainment and media, focusing on how each player looks to maximize value. Students will learn the process of striking a deal, from its inception, to the term sheet phase, to the negotiation process and contractual agreements, through to deal implementation. The process will be evaluated in the context of the factors that play into reaching an agreement, such as exclusivity, windowing, multi-platform rights and timing. Students will learn about negotiations strategies for maximizing value in content deals, identifying common issues in the deal process and effective paths to reaching resolution and striking a deal. The course is designed to help students: –Understand the basics of the process for making a deal in the entertainment industry –Appreciate the factors that play into maximizing value through the deal process, including understanding the relative position of the players in the entertainment industry –Learn and understand negotiating strategies and how to navigate the business affairs and deal-making process
A specialized EMT course within the Berkley Center for Entrepreneurial Studies designed to provide students with a framework for understanding the dynamics of producing (as a business profession) a finished creative product in the entertainment and media industries, developing a business model, and generating an income stream to repay and provide investors with a profit. Educates the student in the process of feature film and long-form television production from the initial concept of the story, through script development, to completion of the project. Covers the most important steps in the production of an independent film, a studio project, a network TV or cable show, a radio program, a Broadway production, and an advertising television commercial. Explores all the elements a producer must know, understand, and eventually become skilled with through mastery of development, including script selection, finance, budgeting, timetable development, team building, talent selection, sales, contract and union negotiation, regulations, technology, and other relevant core competencies.
This is a specialty marketing course designed to provide students with a framework for understanding the dynamics of Broadway and live theater, as an important business enterprise within the entertainment industry. The focus is on understanding the development and application of the economics, finance, structure, implementation and staging of performances, as well as the marketing strategies and tactics for gaining audience awareness and decision to purchase. The course will examine funding, marketing, branding, product positioning and the global distribution of live theatrical entertainment. The course will cover the history, venues, vocabulary, players, business and creative structures, budget development, supplementary revenue streams, successes and failures, relationship with the movie and music industries, the important figures and support systems that make the system work, global reach, and other topics. Lecture, discussions, site visits, and project work will be included.
This course covers the television industry, focusing on network television, cable, and satellite. It primarily surveys the American market and investigates new technology including digitization and HDTV, while providing some comparison with the international broadcast market. Students explore the organization, programming, and revenue strategies, as well as marketing innovations and competition in the newly configured broadcast landscape. Important legislation including the Telecommunications Act of 1996 are also examined. The recent volume of mergers and acquisitions in the broadcast industry are studied for their impact on the domestic entertainment landscape.
Provides a framework for understanding the global expansion of media and entertainment companies. Examines the impact that the significant export growth of American leisure products and services has on the U.S economy. Analyzes the strategies of several leading entertainment and media multinational companies and the development of their entertainment businesses within the major world economic zones. International speakers, cases and readings are used in this course.
This course gives students a basic understanding of key business issues relating to producing, distributing, marketing, and exploiting feature films. The course examines key aspects of the movie business, including managing a creative enterprise, deal making, acquiring rights, building a library, branding, and all aspects of effective marketing. The concepts developed in the course are applied in a group project presentation.
New York’s soundscape is hard to ignore: it can be overwhelming, it is always intricate, but also surprisingly subtle, and there is much that we hear that we don’t really listen to. We will interrelate the subjects of noise, silence, and the city, ranging from important moments in the history of noise abatement in New York City to the philosophy and work of composers such as John Cage. New York City’s diverse population strongly affects and produces its unique soundscape; how does this particular city reflect its inhabitants? There will be off-site field trips to events such as the West Indian Day Parade in Brooklyn, as well as visits to sited works such as Max Neuhaus’s Times Square. We will consider how sound is often explicitly designed to affect and influence us in places such as retail environments. How do our attempts to mediate sound with devices like headphones affect our listening? Students will engage the ideas of writers such as Stuart Hall, Jacques Attali, Luigi Russolo, John Cage, Emily Thompson, R. Murray Schaefer, and Shuhei Hosokawa, as well as works by Christina Kubisch, Susan Phillipz, and Pauline Oliveros. There will be three short production assignments, some of which will be made for specific sites in the city as a way of investigating the interplay between public spaces and listening. At its core, you will be asked to consider the politics and subjectivity of your own listening as a citizen of New York. Who do you hear? How do you sound?
With sales of more than 1.3 billion, the German recorded music market is the third largest in the world: it is larger than the UK music market and behind only the USA and Japan. Beyond just numbers, the Berlin music business is unique: it’s home to hundreds of powerful independent and D.I.Y. record labels; it’s historically been ground zero for innovative electronic and dance music; and it’s a burgeoning tech hub for innovative software/hardware companies like Native Instruments, Ableton and Soundcloud. In this colloquium series, students will meet and hear each week from key creative entrepreneurial figures and innovators in the German and European music business. This course has several purposes. First, students will consider how ongoing economic and technological changes might be impacting the worldwide music business, as speakers discuss controversial trends like the rise of cryptocurrency, block chain and cashless systems, customization technologies like 3D printing and developments in robotics, and radical, disruptive approaches to copyright. Second, students will develop a greater understanding of the chief similarities and differences between the traditional European and US music business operations, particularly with regard to label operations, publishing and copyright, touring and festivals, and nightlife promotion. Third, students will become more informed about the D.I.Y. music business in Berlin itself, as they hear from speakers about the promises and challenges one faces in launching innovative music start ups in Germany. And finally, students will get to meet and network with key movers and shakers in the Berlin scene, past and present. In anticipation for a guest class visit, students may be required to investigate websites, read biographical or contextual material, or attend events outside of class time. Students will be expected to ask informed questions of the guests and to develop responses throughout the course of the class. Students should leave the class with a greater understanding of how the European and German music businesses work and how they themselves might make a business or sales impact on a global scale.
A critical listening study of acoustic music recordings that develops the student’s ability to define and evaluate aesthetic elements of recorded music. Students explore recorded music attributes including dynamic range, stereo imaging, perceived room acoustics, the use of reverb and equalization, naturalness, and the listening perspectives.
A general introduction to the fundamental concepts of music technology, including: MIDI and sequencing, the basics of digital audio, sound recording, mixing and sound synthesis,. The course will also briefly overview advanced topics and applications in the field.
An introduction to maintenance and troubleshooting concepts used in the recording studio. Procedures discussed are those necessary in utilizing sophisticated audio equipment and understanding essential aspects of studio design.
Introduction to the concepts of live concert recording. Microphone selection, characteristics & placement as well as acoustic problems encountered in concert halls will be discussed. Students will have the opportunity to apply the lecture material by recording undergraduate rehearsals & recitals.
This course explores the disruptions and creative possibilities that realtime emerging media provides through the lens of learning how to design, create, produce and perform in realtime. Students will be learning how to design and produce for realtime interactive audiences, understand the modern streaming media pipeline, the fundamentals of virtual production, digital content creation and the basics of game engines and other software – all in the service of delivering a more engaging and intimate connection between audience and performer. Students will design and perform 2 distinct realtime performances as well as work together with peers to conceptualize, design and produce a short realtime ‘pilot’ using the tools and techniques you’ve learned in the first two projects. Prerequisite: None. Fulfillment: Interactive Media Business Elective ; Interactive Media Arts Elective
Students learn about the process of design with measurable metrics, and how to incorporate appropriate engineering standards and multiple realistic constraints in the design process. Students learn how to clearly frame the design problem and follow the design process to result in an optimized solution. Students perform a review of the relevant literature, develop a preliminary design, generate solution concepts and selection criteria, and review and evaluate the chosen design. Students must consider social, economic, lifecycle, environmental, ethical, and other constraints, and must document the design process and the evolution of their design. This project culminates with a final report and presentation that proposes the actual design selected for further development and/or prototyping and testing in the subsequent semester.
Learn how to creatively harness the power of your computer’s graphics card by writing your own shaders! Shaders are small programs that run on the GPU and are used for purposes most commonly related to graphic effects, video post-processing, and the generation of geometry. They are an incredibly powerful tool for creating hardware accelerated graphics and form the building blocks of the modern graphics pipeline. Vertex, fragment, and geometry shaders will be the main focus of the course. However, if time permits, compute shaders (GPGPU) will also be explored. The topic will be approached platform-agnostic, so that it can be applied to the different implementations in various software environments such as WebGL, Unity, Max, Touch Designer, etc. This an advanced-level 2-credit course. Prerequisite: Instructor Consent Fulfilment: IMA/IMB elective; IMA advanced elective.
This course offers students the opportunity to develop a self-initiated project with close mentorship from a faculty member. Projects undertaken can span the areas of conceptual research, business development, creative practice, and media production. The course includes structured weekly workshop and critique times with peers and special guests. It is expected that students will be invested in the work of their peers by providing feedback and carefully consider the feedback they receive during critiques. In addition to weekly meeting times, students are expected to also participate in regular one-on-one meetings with faculty, peers, and guests. A formal project proposal, weekly assignments and documentation, a final project presentation, and participation in the IMA End of Semester show are all required. Although students are encouraged to continue work they may have initiated in a prior class, they may not combine or in any way double count work from this class in another class taken in the same semester. Group work is allowed assuming all group members are enrolled in this class. Students may take this course in either the first or second 7 weeks for 2 credits or repeated across 14 weeks for 4 credits. Prerequisite: Sophomore standing. Fulfilment: IMA/IMB elective; IMA advanced elective.
This course is devoted to a different level of understanding the design and production of making a book. On the first day of class, students bring in digital versions of their art and decide to translate it into a printed piece. The class we’ll focus on book design. Students will begin to explore InDesign and learn how to use the program to create a publication, deciding on the size nand order of image and where text will go. On the second day of class students learn how to work with type. The class explores how to make type work for you and what typefaces work best depending on your design and art. The class will talk about image pacing and the flow of text throughout a publication. On the third day of class, homework is reviewed and InDesign files are revised if needed. The class then turns to production. We will go over each file and make it as final as possible and ready for print. The class will also discuss the different ways to get your document published and how to do each one. In the beginning of this course the students will walk into the classroom with a loose body of work and leave, after the third day, with their work organized into a book format. This course is charged a lab fee. Graduate course numbers are available on Albert.
Lecture and laboratory course that provides students with broad exposure to current questions and experimental approaches in cellular neuroscience. Lectures and laboratories are organized into three areas: cell structure and organization of the vertebrate central nervous system, mechanisms underlying neural signaling and plasticity, and control of cell form and its developmental determinants. Laboratory instruction in anatomical, physiological, and biochemical methods for investigating the biology of nerve cells.
This course introduces the principles and practices of management. Management is viewed as a system of tasks and activities, including environmental scanning, planning, organizing, leading and controlling. Within each major task, is a series of processes, which show how to do what has to be done. Management is a science and an art; both aspects of management are covered in this course. Areas covered are management history, philosophy and the theory and practice of management planning, decision making, organizing, motivating and leading. Special emphasis is on providing the technical and managerial challenges presented by emerging and transformative technologies. Particular consideration is given to the managerial options available to both legacy and entrepreneurial organizations.
Studies a selected section of the Hebrew and Aramaic text of the Babylonian Talmud, utilizing both traditional and academic methods of study. Emphasis is on mastering the themes and concepts while studying the text and its commentaries in depth.
This course provides students with an opportunity to learn about the individual and collaborative services provided by professional managers both inside and outside EMT companies. It develops a system by which to evaluate the quality of the service provided, the nature of the service and how these services are being implemented through collaboration with industry creative and business executives. Through discussions with and lectures by entertainment and media lawyers, accountants, talent and literary agents, studio executives, producers, publicity and advertising specialists, the student will understand the diversity of talents required to complete a project or product successfully. Course Objectives: To provide students with an understanding of the role of the executive in the entertainment and media industries who can assemble a team of creative professionals and manage their activities so that successful content can be the outcome. To share an overview of the various disciplines and content genres/typology needed for the industry sectors that include movies, television, music, publishing, electronic games, theater, and related businesses. To gain insights into legal and financial issues pertaining to the various entertainment and media industry sectors, including basic copyright, intellectual property and privacy issues. To examine the roles and responsibilities of each of the members of the team assembled by the manager (producer, head of production, student head, manager/agent, manager/lawyer, business coach, management consultant). To review and be capable of implementing business plans for funding entertainment projects offered through venture capital, limited partnerships, angels or other specialists in financial deal making. To learn from the experts using lectures, cases, film, texts and guest lectures.
This course will introduce students to social media marketing. Through case studies, interactive sessions, and class exercises, students will learn best practices and develop the skills to connect business objectives with social media strategy, platforms and tactics. We will study how to develop a strategy for a product or service in social media, how to execute that strategy and how to assess the results. Topics will include choosing appropriate platforms, creating effective and engaging social media content, content management, social listening and creating a social media plan. The course also has a practical component, for which students work in small groups and individually.
This course covers the digital technology industry (e.g. consumer electronics, software) from a strategic and marketing perspective. The objectives are to understand how these industries function, the unique challenges they face, and how digital technology companies can leverage their strengths to achieve success in the marketplace. The focus is on understanding the interactions between competition, technology evolution, and firm capabilities.
This course covers the digital technology industry (e.g. consumer electronics, software) from a strategic and marketing perspective. The objectives are to understand how these industries function, the unique challenges they face, and how digital technology companies can leverage their strengths to achieve success in the marketplace. The focus is on understanding the interactions between competition, technology evolution, and firm capabilities.
Video games are now a mainstream form of entertainment. In economic terms, this industry has experienced tremendous growth, despite a grueling recession, growing to an estimated $60 billion worldwide. A key development that has changed the playing field for both the producers and consumers of interactive entertainment is a shift away from physical retail to digital and online game distribution. The audience for games has also shifted—no longer the exclusive practice of hardcore gamers, video games have gained mass appeal in the form of social and casual gaming, on the internet, on consoles, and smartphones. At the same time, the development and publishing of games has become far more accessible. The game behind the game, in a manner of speaking, has changed. In this class, we explore the basic components of the current video game industry. Every week, we review major current events, will hear from people currently working in the industry, examine case studies, and discuss the overall business landscape. Central to each class is the notion that practical business considerations and the design-driven creative process do not have to be in opposition.
Throughout the industry value chain, from content creation to distribution and consumption, technology has changed the way consumers view and use entertainment. Technology has also changed the advertising industry, which is a major source of revenue for the entertainment industry. This course explores the impact of technology, such as interactivity and VOD, on audience trends and fragmentation. The course provides a brief introduction to each of these industries and examines the impact that technology has had on them, including assessment of possibilities for the future.
This course provides students with a framework for understanding the economics and key strategic issues facing organizations in the entertainment industry. It establishes a basis for the formulation of marketing tactics and strategies for firms competing for consumers’ discretionary spending. Recent developments in major sectors of the entertainment industry are covered, including movies, television and cable, theatre, and sports. Issues that cut across all types of entertainment industries are examined, including licensing, promotion, and new technologies.
Introduction to Game Engines is a course intended for students who already have an understanding of programming fundamentals that introduces concepts, problems, and methods of developing games and interactive media using popular game engines. Game engines are no longer just used for the development of games, they have increasingly gained popularity as tools for developing animations, interactives, VR experience, and new media art. Throughout the semester, students will have weekly programming assignments, using a popular game engine. There will be a final game assignment, as well as weekly quizzes and a final exam. The course assumes prior programming knowledge, if students do not have the appropriate prerequisites a placement exam may be taken. There will be an emphasis on using code in a game engine environment as a means of creative expression.
Designed to help students understand and appreciate the linguistic and aesthetic features of Chinese language rendered in poetic form and to improve their ability to read and interpret authentic texts in general. Integrates language learning with poetry study, introduces the formal structure of Chinese classical poetry and surveys its stylistic variations at different historical conjunctures. Conducted primarily in Chinese. English translations of the poems are provided as references from time to time.
The current design methods and technologies in the field of digital entertainment, from design concepts to design tools, are still based on 2D screens, but the product is often 3D. This contradiction results in the designers not being able to see the final consequences of their work directly. Can existing VR technologies solve this contradiction? Immersive design is a new design method for digital creativities beyond the screen. It usually takes VR, AR, or MR devices as design interfaces to craft 3D models, textures, game environments, and other gaming experiences. Not only game assets creation but also game design concepts can be changed with these new technical inputs. In this course, students will answer the following questions: ○ Is immersive design more intuitive? ○ Is immersive design more efficient? ○ Do immersive design techniques have lower learning costs? ○ What traditional design lessons and concepts can be applied in an immersive design environment? In view of these questions, students from different disciplines will give answers through discussions, projects, collaboration, documentation, and VR games. Prerequisite: Communications Lab. Fulfillment: IMA/IMB Elective.
The aim of this course is to explore the relationship between the virtual self and environment and to assess both as a space for learning and collaboration using virtual reality. This course takes place entirely in virtual, immersive environments. Students will be provided Oculus Quest 2 virtual reality headsets and specialized software. See the principles above for further details. Prerequisite: IMA Major with junior or senior standing. Fulfillment: IMA/IMB Elective.
This course surveys the history and development of jazz music in America from the mid 1800s to current trends in popular music. Through a historical timeline, student will study jazz music’s range of styles as informed by social, regional, cultural, technological, and political trends. Realizing that all music is a reflection of historical events and the cultures they are informed by, students will analyze the close connection between jazz music and why it is known as America’s true original artform.
This course shines a bright light on racial inequality in the United States by focusing on structural disparities in key areas of American life: Income, wealth and employment; the right to vote, health and wellbeing, education and juvenile justice. Vanguard leaders from across NYU and across fields of Law, Public Health and Allied Health fields, Education, Social Work, and Public Policy provide insights on key scholarly and community-based frameworks they use to confront problems of inequality in the United States. They share their expertise in designing and implementing policy solutions that offer the promise of a more equitable future.
David Bowie’s life and work offer a template for how to survive and continue to evolve as a musical artist. David Bowie has kept the music industry, his fans and the world guessing throughout a career that spans over four decades. Bowie himself put his secret best in his prophetic 1972 song, “Ch-ch-ch-ch Changes”; a multi-talented performer, writer and visual artist, Bowie has played his career like an instrument, selecting trends of every generation to process, absorb and adapt into successive phases of his ever-evolving chameleon persona. In this day of ceaseless multiple media, Bowie’s most recent, and typically perverse, coup was keeping secret the recording of his 2013 album, The Next Day, over a two-year recording period. The manipulative bravado of knowing when and how to keep a star’s inaccessibility and mystery, or to expose oneself, as Bowie did on TV in his own darkest days, has given David Bowie a singular, enduring mystique, glamour and respect. Examining the arc of his work is a window into significant scenes of every decade since the 1950s, and offers insight into: the British Blues scene that produced the Beatles and the Rolling Stones; the hippy free festival counter-culture; r’n’b; futurism; electronica;glam and gender games, improvisation; soul; funk; dance; disco; minimalism; ambient; avant-garde theater; and above all, the endlessly evolving sound of US and UK young clubland, including recent jungle and garage, to which Bowie consistently returns to recharge and find a new direction to make his own.
In 2021, New Zealand pop star / singer-songwriter Lorde released a five-song EP of tracks from her Solar Power album, rerecorded in the indigenous Māori language. Five years prior, pop stars like Pharrell Williams, Dave Matthews, Radiohead, and Sia raised their voices at Standing Rock, North Dakota in support of the protests against the Dakota Access Pipeline—one of many increasing threats to the sovereignty of Indigenous Nations. Their celebrity presence was key to attracting mainstream media coverage. However, those artists were largely following the lead of Native hip-hoppers like Supaman, Snotty Nose Rez Kids, and Prolific, who’d already been at Standing Rock since the start of the protests, rallying their own communities. This course will engage students around the growing globalization of Indigenous Peoples movements that intersects culture, politics, and economics. These days, Indigenous musicians like Aboriginal Australian rapper Baker Boy and Canadian First Nations vocalist Jeremy Dutcher are gaining in visibility, topping critics’ year-end Best-Of lists and taking home awards. This “Creative Natives” wave is being felt far outside of music, too: Tzotzil fashion designer Alberto López Gomez from Chiapas, Mexico was featured in New York Fashion Week; Māori filmmaker Taika Waititi won an Oscar for JoJo Rabbit; influential art critics heralded White Mountain Apache music performance artist and film scorer Laura Ortman at the 2020 Whitney Biennial, and Seminole/Muscogee Creek showrunner Sterling Harjo’s Reservation Dogs is the new hit on FX/Hulu. Over the course of seven weeks, students will engage with a wide range of international Indigenous performers and music(s) they may have never heard before—from Māori metal to Saami yoik-rap, Quechua huanyo-pop, Inuit throatsinging, Maasai hip-hop, Hawaiian reggae, Tokelauan dance-pop, and even Tuareg rock. Meanwhile, they will discover how Indigenous artists have not only achieved national, even international, acclaim in popular mainstream music genres, they are increasingly “indigenizing” them with languages, instruments, and vocal techniques from their own cultural traditions. We will also look at some Indigenous stars who broke barriers to achieve mainstream fame as singular personalities and cultural ambassadors: artists like Yma Sumac, Buffy Sainte-Marie, Israel Kamakawiwo’ole, and more. And also, we’ll survey the impact of Indigenous artists and music on the both the mainstream recording industry, as well as the growth of Indigenous-directed business entities doing things on their own terms. Through readings, lectures, and class discussions, students will be introduced to important scholarship on Indigenous identity, (de-)colonization, cultural appropriation, aesthetics, and so on. Any student interested in socio-cultural movements, roots music trends, arts-centered activism, and the ways in which music introduces audiences to the messages within each of these—especially regarding themes like climate justice, human rights, social inclusion, and sovereignty issues—will benefit from taking this class. Students can also expect to leave the course with a greater awareness of, and hopefully appreciation for, the growing global presence and popularity of Indigenous sounds, voices, and views.
The name “Taylor Swift” has become synonymous with a number of big ideas. To some in the music industry, the eleven-time Grammy winner (including three Album of the Year awards) defines 21st century country music’s pivot to pop radio. To others, Taylor Swift is the pop star of the 2010s (with the album sales and chart history to back it up— With sales of over 200 million records worldwide, Swift is one of the best-selling music artists of all time). When deployed pejoratively, however, the name “Taylor Swift” can signal anything from white privilege to white feminism to white taste in an era of intersectionality and Black Lives Matter conscientiousness. Taylor Swift may be a loaded phrase for some, but the career of Taylor Swift is more simply an embodiment of music’s American Dream. Raised on a Christmas tree farm in Pennsylvania, teenage Swift would move to Nashville and become one of the most lauded young songwriters in history. Her music was infatuated with love, innocence and romantic fantasias that would sour in the natural way those fairy tales do as a young woman grows up. By her early twenties, she was a full-fledged pop icon, having ditched Music Row for producers like Max Martin and Jack Antonoff, and tabloid fame. Along the way, there were feuds, squads and political discourses aplenty. Swift has encountered the type of controversies that would destroy most pop stars’ careers and acclaim. But at age 31, she has never been more awarded or acclaimed as a singer-songwriter. Meanwhile, her impact is felt in the success and style of younger singers/songwriters like Olivia Rodrigo, Conan Gray, Phoebe Bridgers and Clairo. This course proposes to deconstruct both the appeal and aversions to Taylor Swift through close readings of her music and public discourse as it relates to her own growth as an artist and a celebrity. Through readings, lectures and more, the class delves into analyses of the culture and politics of teen girlhood in pop music, fandom, media studies, whiteness and power as it relates to her image and the images of those who have both preceded and succeeded her. We’ll also consider topics like copyright and ownership, American nationalism and the ongoing impact of social media on the pop music industry.
Fortnite’s concerts with Marshmello and Travis Scott. Open Pit’s DIY music festivals in Minecraft. League of Legends’ K-pop and hip-hop groups. Indie label Monstercat’s deals with Rocket League and Roblox. Sony Music’s gaming imprint Lost Rings. Grand Theft Auto’s 75 billion minutes of in-game music listening. “Fantasy record label” apps like FanLabel that allow fans to assemble their own “brackets” of artists that they think will do best on the charts. These are just a handful of examples of how music and games are increasingly overlapping as industries, experiences and cultures. There are strong mutual incentives at play: Game developers are blooming into full-fledged media brands and are looking to the music business for both financial and cultural capital, while music companies are looking to diversify their revenue, experiment with more interactive technologies and tap into the power of highly engaged communities online. In the process, this merging of entertainment worlds is also rewriting conventional wisdom of what it means to be an artist, a performer, gamer and especially a fan. This course will give students the critical frameworks and vocabulary to dissect how games are being incorporated into every corner of the music industry — from the moment music is created, to the strategies that inform how music is then disseminated, marketed, monetized and performed. We will draw from a combination of theoretical readings and real-world case studies to dissect video games that center music in their player experience on the one hand, and musical projects that draw direct inspiration from games in their approaches to design, marketing, business and fan engagement on the other hand. Because this field is relatively new, many of these case studies may emerge in real time as the course unfolds. This course will be reading-, writing- and play-intensive, with required and suggested games and soundtracks for students to play, watch or listen to every week. Throughout the course, students will have the opportunity to workshop their own creative, marketing and/or business strategies for hybrid music/game projects, walking away with a concrete plan of action for incorporating the fast-paced gaming industry into their own careers.
In name alone, Led Zeppelin carries mountains of meaning: the most successful and arguably the most influential rock band of all time. The creators of a mythic, mystical, guitar-based style that gave birth to the sounds and iconography of heavy metal. Song-crafters whose studio mastery, utilizing recording technology of the day, generated some of the most enduring rock recordings of their era, establishing standards that still define a stylistic and emotional extreme of popular music. The four British musicians who came out of the electric blues scene of the late ‘60s, recording and touring as a unit for a mere twelve years, together achieved a legendary stature that requires much study to fully appreciate more than thirty years after their demise. This course will consider the history of Led Zeppelin from a variety of perspectives: social and stylistic context; the nuts and bolts of their music—live and in the studio; the hows and whys of the band as a business. Using books, articles, videos, and a generous sampling of music, the course will follow their arrival in the final, psychedelic heyday of swingin’ London of the ‘60s; through their roots in folk and acoustic blues and later experimentations with Indian and North African music, and their rise in an era that was hungry for a heavier, more bombastic sound. The course will include special focus on the group’s technical leader and visionary, guitarist Jimmy Page, who came with prior credits as a sessionman and guitarist in the blues-rock band the Yardbirds, as well as other major players in the Zeppelin story—engineer Glyn Johns, manager Pater Grant—who helped build the sonic and popular juggernaut that the band became. In-class guest speakers will be featured, many who participated or witnessed the Led Zeppelin phenomenon, as well as a screening of the group’s concert film The Song Remains The Same.
This course offers a look at the lack of ethics and affects and effects upon humanity in the development of big tech, social media and the internet. Kicking off with the viewing of the number one doc on this topic “The Social Dilemma”, we begin a conversation around the impact of social media and technology on our lives and how to address it. Students will view documentaries, read books and engage in conversations in break out think tank groups in order to come up with solutions in a midterm one page manifesto for the greater good of humanity. Required readings include from “Understanding New Media Extending Marshall McLuhan” by Robert K Logan to set a framework of what technology is, followed by reading Jaron Lanier, “10 arguments for deleting your social media accounts right now”, and dipping into the spirituality side with “igods” by Craig Detweiler, ending with “Irresistible” by our very own NYU Professor Adam Alter. In partnership with the center for Humane Technology and their curricula support for academics, this course seeks to ask hard questions, dispel mistruths, host constructive conversations, test experiments and create a dialogue around how we must change the ways we develop and interact with tech for our survival. A willingness to take part in class experiments and experience based learning around topics of social media and technology is required. Final culmination of work from the course is a utopian project pitch deck that students design with the task of creating seedlings for new sustainable and humane business models for social media, big tech, and entrepreneurial situations, in hopes that some may go on to grow, bloom and fruit necessary change for the greater good of all. Students at the end of the semester will ethically assess their work and assign their own grade based on their self evaluation.
This course will be an introduction to studio art for students, to traverse both cultural and temporal barriers of visual arts. Students will examine the content of artwork, and build various skills to translate ideas into reality. Class time will be devoted to individual projects and critiques, lectures, and group discussions. This course is open to all students with or without an art background. Note that attendance in the first class meeting is mandatory, otherwise you will be dropped from the course. Prerequisite: None. Fulfillment: general elective
While traditional forms of art such as painting and sculpture only expect intellectual communication with the spectator, interactive arts consider the audience as active participants and directly involve their physical bodies and actions. Interactive art invites its audience to have a conversation with the artwork or even be part of it. Well designed interactions add new meanings to the artwork and enhance effective and memorable communication with the viewer through their magical quality. Artists have achieved interactivity in their art through different strategies based on various technologies. For example, some projects have physical interfaces such as buttons and knobs, some projects react to the audience’s presence or specific body movements, and yet others require collaborations between the audience as part of the interaction process. Some artwork involves interactions that require a long period of time for the engagement. In many of these interactive art projects, interaction methods are deeply embedded into the soul and voice of the work itself. In this class, we will explore interaction as an artistic medium. We will be looking at interactive media art history through the lens of interaction and technology to explore their potential as art making tools. Every 1-2 weeks, you will be introduced to a new interaction strategy along with a group of artists and projects. You will learn about relevant technologies and skills for the interaction strategies and build your own project to be in conversation with the artists and projects. You will also explore and discuss the future of interactions and how interactive art can contribute to innovations in interactions, and vice versa. You will also learn about how to contextualize and articulate your project in an artistic way. The assignments include reading, short writing, hands-on labs, and production assignments. Technical topics covered in class include but are not limited to: physical computing, sensing, and interaction design.
This two-point workshop is centered on the examination and creation of collective storytelling environments. We will examine a wide-range of storytelling spaces including participatory and user-generated environments, site-specific works, community based arts practices, and transmedia storytelling. Weekly assignments, field trips, and student presentations.
Beginning with the invention of paper, the paper craft movement has roots on all continents. This course is divided into several subject areas: the history of paper and paper making, paper folding, paper cutting, paper engineering, paper automata, and the contemporary DIY electronics and paper craft moment. Each subject area has associated readings, a short research presentation on international traditions and forms, several hands-on mechanical exercises, and one individual creative exercise.
Electronic Textiles spans the worlds of craft, electronics, and computing. We will build skills in the often surprising world of using soft, stretchy or low tech materials where one might have expected hard, dimensionally stable, or high tech materials and vice versa. Weekly projects will have requirements for craftsmanship and design, and will build skills in integrating electronics and computing with soft items and wearables, making sensors and displays, tailoring and costuming, and creating your own materials. You will gain familiarity with materials and with hand and machine crafting skills. Weekly readings for discussion will be required, and presentations and guest speakers will offer you ideas and critical challenges. Pre-req: None. Fulfillment: IMA/B Elective
In this course we combine both analytic and embodied learning about human movement practices. We will learn selected computational and physical movement sensing techniques (webcam-based, wearable-based, and commercial motion capture technologies). We will combine guest and student-led presentations and activities that involve us in movement while learning structures and history of selected movement practices such as dance and circus arts. We will do four sprint projects of approximately one week in length (each semester projects differ, but may include examples such as PoseNet/MoveNet, Creating a Fitness Tracker, Rhythm Game, Non-humanoid MoCap avatars), alternating with work on a class choreographic project and individual research and writing of a paper on a movement practice. Prerequisite: Creative Coding Lab or equivalent programming experience. Fulfillment: IMA/B Elective.
This course offers students the opportunity to develop a self-initiated project with close mentorship from a faculty member. Projects undertaken can span the areas of conceptual research, business development, creative practice, and media production. The course includes structured weekly workshop and critique times with peers and special guests. It is expected that students will embrace open-source and open-content ideals in their work, be invested in the work of their peers by providing feedback, and consider the feedback they receive during critique. In addition to weekly meeting times, students are expected to also participate in regular one-on-one meetings with faculty, peers, and guests. A formal project proposal, weekly assessments and documentation, a final project presentation, and participation in the IMA End of Semester show are all required. Although students are encouraged to continue work they may have initiated in a prior class, they may not combine or in any way double count work from this class in another class taken in the same semester. Group work is allowed assuming all group members are enrolled in this class. Students may take INTM-SHU 140T-A in the first 7 weeks for 2 credits or take this course in the second 7 week or take both of them across 14 weeks for 4 credits. It is open to anyone in any major assuming they have satisfied the prerequisites. Prerequisites: None Fulfillment: IMA /IMB elective.
This course offers students the opportunity to develop a self-initiated project with close mentorship from a faculty member. Projects undertaken can span the areas of conceptual research, business development, creative practice, and media production. The course includes structured weekly workshop and critique times with peers and special guests. It is expected that students will embrace open-source and open-content ideals in their work, be invested in the work of their peers by providing feedback, and consider the feedback they receive during critique. In addition to weekly meeting times, students are expected to also participate in regular one-on-one meetings with faculty, peers, and guests. A formal project proposal, weekly assessments and documentation, a final project presentation, and participation in the IMA End of Semester show are all required. Although students are encouraged to continue work they may have initiated in a prior class, they may not combine or in any way double count work from this class in another class taken in the same semester. Group work is allowed assuming all group members are enrolled in this class. Students may take this course in the first 7 weeks for 2 credits or take INTM-SHU 140T-B in the second 7 week or take both of them across 14 weeks for 4 credits. It is open to anyone in any major assuming they have satisfied the prerequisites. Prerequisites: None Fulfillment: IMA /IMB elective.
Experience Studio engages students in an immersive learning experience that brings them outside the classroom and into the community. This project-based course provides an opportunity for students to learn about experience design in practice. They will (1) engage in field experience with a community partner, exploring the theoretical and practical underpinnings of experience design through readings, guest talks, field trips, and reflective practice. Drawing from their field research learnings, students (2) produce a project that addresses a real-world challenge, through processes such as rapid prototyping, user testing, and customer research (informed by skills and insights from the initial experience). This course can be taken repeatedly as it will be offered by different instructors in collaboration with different course partners each semester. For the upcoming semester’s offerings, please visit: http://creativityandinnovation.shanghai.nyu.edu/experiencestudio. Prerequisite: None Fulfillment: IMA/IMB elective. (open to all; no prerequisites)
After its reunification, Berlin gained a well-deserved reputation as an ‘anything-goes’ cultural playground. But just as radical cultural experimentation was leading to the city’s techno Renaissance, the same urban frontier was quietly transforming into a hotbed for new business ideas around tech. Companies like Ableton, Native Instruments, and SoundCloud started in the city and grew from headquarters there into leaders in the field of music technology. They join other world leaders in music tech around Europe, like Spotify, Deezer, Mixcloud, Focusrite/Novation, and Propellerhead. Berlin is quickly becoming known as a world-class hub for innovative tech start-ups and progressive developments in emergent media. This class, open to all students, shines a light on key Berlin-based entrepreneurial figures and innovators in music technology, with a focus on those successful individuals who have launched recognized or profitable music-focused startups. The idea is for students, many of whom are aspiring entrepreneurs, to hear directly from, and ask questions directly to, established Berlin based tech entrepreneurs, in moderated conversation. In anticipation for a guest class visit, students may be required to investigate websites, read biographical or contextual material, or attend events outside of class time. Students will be expected to ask informed questions of the guests and to develop responses throughout the course of the class. All events and speakers are subject to change.
During this course, students will acquire an in-depth, theoretical and practical knowledge of Digital Audio Workstations using the industry standard Logic Pro software through a weekly, lab-based workshop. Each class will be a combination of lecture and immediate application. An emphasis will be placed on getting to know Logic Pro, getting inside Logic Pro, creating sessions, working with media in sessions, audio recording, audio editing, file management techniques, MIDI recording, editing techniques, mixing techniques, backups and stereo mix-down.
Course description (optional): Not all innovation starts in the West and gets exported to other parts of the world. In many places with less developed capitalist economies and infrastructures, technology is rapidly developed and adapted for hyper-local use. We’ll gain inspiration from a broad spectrum of creative uses of technology in the developing world(s) — from art and design, hacktivism, and community-oriented work that increase social good, and then conceive of and prototype our own projects. Special attention will be paid to speculative 3D fabrication tools and processes, web-based platforms, circuit bending and making them all work together! Students will experiment and research at the intersections of art and technology to develop the beginnings of work grounded in post-colonial reality and the late capitalist near-future.
Weed. Pot. Bud. Grass. Ganja. Reefer. Mary Jane. Skunk. Herb. Cannabis. It’s all marijuana – the most commonly used, in most states still illicit, drug in the United States. Calming for some, anxiety provoking for others, perhaps medicinal, always controversial, marijuana causes wonder and confusion among physicians, parents, teachers, adolescents, and lawmakers. After 50 years of debate, marijuana remains one of our most visible modern-day conundrums – is it “okay?” Is marijuana safe and therapeutic, or is it dangerous and a gateway to more harmful drugs? Through lecture, discussion, and a thorough analysis of the current research literature in neuroscience and human development, we will seek to answer these questions and identify marijuana’s role in psychology, medicine, culture, and government policy.
Is healthy media use possible? What does that look like? Most of us use our electronic devices more than we had planned, and a quarter of US college students are estimated to experience internet overuse. Electronic device overuse is associated with an increased risk of depression, anxiety, and loneliness, along with a host of neuropsychological changes. In this course, we will discuss the rise of internet overuse, its associated negative consequences and possible strategies to reduce excessive use.Specifically, the course covers: 1) the definition of internet and phone overuse, 2) the brain mechanisms and behavioral patterns which lead to excessive use, 3) how brain/behavioral mechanisms are exploited to make video-games, television programs, and websites as addictive as possible, and 4) what we can do to regain our balance at the personal and societal levels. Department of History Medieval France.
Grand Rounds are a traditional and effective teaching tool in medical education, where major research, education, and clinical problems and innovations are presented to an audience of medical students, residents, faculty, and the public at large. The NYU Child Study Center’s weekly Grand Rounds program is one of the foremost of its kind in the world, featuring invited thought leaders in the fields of child and adolescent psychiatry and psychology. This seminar course provides undergraduate students with a unique opportunity to attend the weekly Grand Rounds presentation and then discuss these topics in depth with CAMS faculty. Students will gain a deep and broad understanding of many challenges within the field of child and adolescent mental health, along with novel theories, research findings, and clinical treatments.
This course will introduce students to the basic concepts of 3D design and capture through the use of apps and other tools. Through examination and discussion of the current state of 3D printing technology we will explore current and future implications for music and the music business, including but not limited to, live and recorded music, music publishing, innovative tools, part and instrument fabrication, licensing, management, touring, copyright, distribution and marketing. Extra focus will be given to existing and potential merchandise platforms, as well as how 3D can lead to the growth of new industries and new opportunities for cross-pollination with a variety of sectors. Students will be encouraged to pursue both practical and abstract concepts in the furtherance of dynamic and newly inventive ideas – and will be required to develop and submit a concept and plan for their final project.
During this course, students will acquire an in-depth, theoretical and practical knowledge of Digital Audio Workstations using the industry standard Pro Tools software through a weekly, lab-based workshop. Each class will be a combination of lecture and immediate application. An emphasis will be placed on getting to know Pro Tools, getting inside Pro Tools, creating sessions, working with media in sessions, audio recording, audio editing, file management techniques, MIDI recording, editing techniques, mixing techniques, backups and stereo mix-down.
This class builds upon the techniques of the recording studio and the techniques of producing recorded music begun in Engineering the Record I, IIand Producing the Record Side A and B and will explore advanced techniques used in surround and immersive sound recording and mixing. Today, surround and immersive audio can be found in all areas of popular entertainment: music, film, television, streaming, games, etc. By using the multichannel studio facilities of the Clive Davis Institute of Recorded Music, students will further learn to record and mix in surround and immersive audio formats. Assigned work will take place in Studio 1 and Studio 4.
Introduction to Game Engines is a course intended for students who already have an understanding of programming fundamentals that introduces concepts, problems, and methods of developing games and interactive media using popular game engines. Game engines are no longer just used for the development of games, they have increasing gained popularity as tools for developing animations, interactives, VR experience, and new media art. Throughout the semester, students will have weekly programming assignments, using a popular game engine. There will be a final game assignment, as well as weekly quizzes and a final exam. The course assumes prior programming knowledge, if students do not have the appropriate prerequisites a placement exam may be taken. There will be an emphasis on using code in a game engine environment as a means of creative expression.
In this course, we will explore how to create narratives that leverage our lesser used senses like touch, taste and smell as well as lesser-known ones like space, time, balance and scale. We will dig into the history of experiential storytelling, starting from immersive theater and Smell-O-vision to cutting-edge haptics and mind-bending illusions of proprioception. To help center this back in practical applications, we will also explore how this evolving art is commonly used in exhibition design, experiential marketing and brick and mortar retail. The class will be a healthy mixture of game theory as well as experienced based learning (meaning there will be a couple field trips and multisensory VR projects to explore). A basic knowledge of game engines is ideal but not mandatory because we will be using predesigned templates in Unreal engine to be experienced and manipulated in real-time through virtual reality hardware.
To be a VR creator, it’s not enough to learn the hard skills—it’s also our responsibility to prime ourselves for the human impact of our work. As a means to design VR that is both enjoyable and accountable, this class proposes we borrow design principles from Hedonomics, a branch of ergonomic science that facilitates pleasurable human-technology interaction. Through the Hedonomic Pyramid, we’re able to section our thinking off into regions (Safety, Function, Usability, Pleasure and Individuation) and map out industry-tested VR design guidance for each. The result is a hierarchical checklist of proven principles, specifications and practices—that promote a culture of inclusive and holistic design—built to serve as a quickstart guide to designing accountable VR interfaces and systems. This class, divided into units that represent each level of the Hedonomic pyramid, will unpack both technical and conceptual strategies for creating VR, from visual interface fidelity to avoiding locomotion cybersickness to designing safer social VR spaces.
Buildings produce a large percentage of the carbon emissions threatening the planet and multi-family residential buildings make up a significant portion of it. With Covid-19 changing the way we live and work, and the increasing amount of data available from buildings, a key to fighting the climate crisis will be turning this data into action. In this course, learn how to analyze interval data and explore visualizing data to motivate tenants and building operators to change their behavior to reduce energy usage at the optimal times. This will involve analyzing the data streams coming from installed sensors and building equipment, understanding how usage varies over time, and transforming raw data into visual interfaces that mobilize us all in the fight to save the planet. This course will teach basics of how time series data can be stored, how to query time series data, and how to understand energy usage from a data set. With these new skills students will design a project using time series data and their JavaScript skills to visualize this data.
This course will serve as an incubator to imagine a speculative product advertisement in the year 2030. In films like Blade Runner, or Her adverts fill the world and become an important aspect of exposition for the film. And in the real world, works such as Alisha Wormlsey, Alexandra Bell, and Hank Willis Thomas begin to re-imagine advertisements as an art practice in society today. Our work will begin to speculate on near-future objects in which topics such as communication, energy storage, transportation can begin to be re-imagined in the next industrial revolution. Using 3D tools, students will gain experience in speculative design thinking, industrial design modeling, product lighting, and custom post-production methods. The final project will be a product advert that will be designed to promote a speculative design entirely made from 100% Biodegradable plastics. The course will look at the ready-made objects all around us as a launching pad. We will be starting with modeling an object in detail. Using Moi 3D, Maya, Render Engine TBD, After Effects, and premiere over the course of the semester. I will go through some of the latest tools within the VFX industry and support this course with a series of artists who have re-imaged the role of cultural production. The final will be an advertisement poster and animation.
If social change begins in the imagination, how then can creators better envision and render the more just and beautiful worlds we want to make? Storytelling has the power to be an alchemical force for revolutionary change. Together, we seek to interrogate and apply interactive storytelling as a technology we can deploy in service of our collective liberation. In this course, we pair a study of story as liberatory praxis with a hands-on grounding in emerging tech tools that allow viewers/players to take an active role. Interactive storytelling technology in video, audio, and text powerfully situates viewers inside constructed narrative worlds. Creators in these emerging media gain the capacity to design choices and respond accordingly, propelling imagination toward agency and enhancing empathic connections between viewers/players and characters. What will it mean to use these tools to tell deeper stories that ask urgent questions about how we want to live in the world? “Part of being a revolutionary is creating a vision that is more humane. That is more fun, too. That is more loving. It’s really working to create something beautiful.” —Assata Shakur
Not all innovation starts in the West and gets exported to other parts of the world. In many places with less developed capitalist economies and infrastructures, technology is rapidly developed and adapted for hyper-local use. We’ll gain inspiration from a broad spectrum of creative uses of technology in the developing world(s) — from art and design, hacktivism, and community-oriented work that increase social good, and then conceive of and prototype our own projects. Special attention will be paid to circuit-bending and designing custom PCB boards using open-source software like CircuitMaker and EAGLE.
This course traces along the scholarship of Anna Tsing and Donna Haraway, and Animist and Perspectivist cosmologies to study and consider our positions within multispecies relations via material exploration and interspecies storytelling. This is a hands-on course engaging in communal growing and fabrication using biomaterials such as bacterial cellulose, mycelium, lactobacilli, yeast, and more. During the course students will participate in guided somatic exercises and writing as a generative pathway to create their own multispecies allegories and exploratory projects. We will look over and talk about the work by artists such as: Natalie Jeremijenko, CAConrad, Alexis Pauline Gumbs, Anicka Yi, Bo Zheng, Una Chaudhuri, Agnieszka Kurant and Ernst Karel.
This course aims to provide students with the analytical skills to interpret current trends, policies and problems into futuristic (5 years) product proposals and the thought leadership and communication skills to clearly articulate and pitch those ideas. Projects can range from how prolonged quarantine will impact home exercise to the future of entertainment in self driving cars. Students will research and explore an opportunity space of their choosing where they will infer future problems from current trends then create a speculative solution. They will package their product thinking into a pitch deck and present back to the class. The class format will include lecture, in-class and out-of-class design exercises that apply the concepts covered in the class lecture and a final presentation and critique.
Is it a plaything? Sculpture? Nostalgia? A Product? Art toys exist at the center of a unique Venn diagram. Each student in this class will develop an original limited edition art toy. We will cover toy fabrication, character design, material selection, packaging design, and art toy culture. The class will be fabrication heavy, there will be weekly assignments, and a final project.
This course explores the disruptions and creative possibilities that realtime emerging media provides through the lens of learning how to design, create, produce and perform in realtime. Students will be learning how to design and produce for realtime interactive audiences, understand the modern streaming media pipeline, the fundamentals of virtual production, digital content creation and the basics of game engines and other software – all in the service of delivering a more engaging and intimate connection between audience and performer. Students will design and perform 2 distinct realtime performances as well as work together with peers to conceptualize, design and produce a short realtime ‘pilot’ using the tools and techniques you’ve learned in the first two projects. Prerequisite: None. Fulfillment: Interactive Media Business Elective ; Interactive Media Arts Elective
Fairy tales, myths, and stories of magic have always served as a way for both children and adults to make sense of the unpredictabilities of the world around them. How do these stories serve us today? How do new technologies allow us to reinterpret them so that they have new meaning for our times? Through readings, weekly exercises, and a final project, students in this course will explore the historic role and structure of fairy tales as well as the potential contemporary frameworks that allow us to entertain the impossible. Students will work with stories of their choosing however we will examine their implementation through traditional material and book art techniques, as well as projection mapping, 3D and VR (using Unreal Engine.)
This course aims to provide students with the critical thinking and practical skills for creating effective and compelling user interfaces. We will dissect what a compelling user experience is and discuss and apply design frameworks and methods for creating one. Throughout this 2pt course we will examine a range of examples of interfaces with a focus on understanding the attributes of a successful interfaces and hands-on experience applying proven research, mapping and testing UX techniques. The class format is lecture and studio and will include discussions, student presentations and critique, and in-class design exercises. The exercises and assignments focus on problems that are typical of those a UX designer will encounter in the professional world.
Physical Computing is an approach to computer-human interaction design that starts by considering how humans express themselves physically and how computers can sense that expression. This course is designed to provide students with hands-on experience in researching, designing, and building physical interfaces for computers and other digital devices. Physical computing takes a hands-on approach. Students will learn to understand electronic sensors, connect them to computers, write programs, and build enclosures to hold sensors and controls. They will also learn to integrate all of these skills in the design of devices which respond to human physical expression.
This course will focus on the prototyping of wearable electronics projects for a single user: you. In this class we will wear what we make, following an iterative cycle of research-design-make-wear. Lectures, readings, and discussions will serve to provide historical and contemporary framing for our work. Wearable technology prototyping strategies and techniques will be shared and tested. Special focus will be placed on circuit building and fabrication approaches that are compatible with a home studio environment. Previous experience with electronics or physical computing is strongly encouraged. Students will emerge from the course with a deeper knowledge of what it takes to develop and refine a robust, bespoke wearable electronics project.
Time to get your hands dirty. Prototypes need to be created, motors have to be mounted, enclosures must be built. Understanding how things are fabricated makes you a better maker. But hardware is hard. You can’t simply copy and paste an object or working device (not yet anyway), fabrication skills and techniques need to be developed and practiced in order to create quality work. You learn to make by doing. In this class, you will become familiar and comfortable with all the ITP shop has to offer. We will cover everything from basic hand tools to the beginnings of digital fabrication. You will learn to use the right tool for the job. There will be weekly assignments created to develop your fabrication techniques. There will be in class lectures, demos, and building assignments. Emphasis will be put on good design practices, material choice, and craftsmanship.
Designed for BFA (Studio Art) students, this course is an introduction to the global history of art, exploring the meanings associated with “art.” The class is a series of linked test cases involving specific art objects & the context of their creation. By working closely with a range of materials –– art history & theory, artist’s writings, & documentary film –– we will survey how artists have contributed to the history of art and question how this history matters for contemporary artists.
An introduction to the history, theory and practice of computer-aided artistic endeavors in the field of visual arts. This class will focus on the appearance of computers as a new tool for artists to integrate in their artistic practice, and how it shaped a specific aesthetic language across traditional practitioners and newcomers alike. We will be elaborating and discussing concepts and paradigms specific to computing platforms, such as system art, generative art, image processing and motion art. Drawing on those areas, students will explore their own artistic practice through the exclusive use of their computers. The course will also serve as a technical introduction to the OpenFrameworks programming environment to create works of visual art. As such, Software Art: Image will be an art history and critical studies course with a studio component. Software Art: Image is a complement to Software Art: Text, a 7-week course approaching software and computation from the perspective of poetry and fiction. The two courses can be taken in series or independently.
An introduction to the history, theory and practice of computer-aided artistic endeavors in the field of prose and poetry. This class will focus on the appearance and role of computers as a new way for artists to write and read both programming and natural languages. While elaborating and discussing concepts and paradigms specific to computing platforms, such as recomposition, stochastic writing and ambiguity, students will be encouraged to explore their own artistic practice through the exclusive use of their computers, by writing their own programs. As such, Software Art: Text will be a literary history and critical studies course with an active writing component (in both Python and English). Students will be exposed to new creative perspectives on reading and writing in the digital age. Software Art: Text is a complement to Software Art: Image, a 7-week course approaching software and computation from the perspective of the visual arts. The two courses can be taken in series or independently.
This 2-unit interdisciplinary research seminar will be held in conjunction with an international symposium convened by the NYU Center for AI and Culture, which will bring leading scholars, curators, science fiction writers, and heads of major platform research groups to campus. The seminar will host a deeper interdisciplinary conversation on the issues that underpin their work. Seminar participants will meet each of the conference speakers. We will emphasize the overlapping and intersecting histories of “AI” in cognitive science, philosophy, interactive and computer arts, and science fiction literature and film. The frequent back-and-forth between AI in fiction and in fact is the basis of how we will, together, attempt to map the divergent futures of AI. It is said that artificial intelligence will be as important to the twenty-first century as oil was to the twentieth. AI is promoted by China, Europe, Russia and the USA as central to their innovation strategies and, as such, may portend a new computational arms race. There is consensus that geopolitical peace and conflict may be determined by how great nations use AI for good or ill. To define AI is is to conceive what is and is not “intelligence” and what is and is not “artificial.” Because no two cultures understand these basic terms in the same way, they will not understand AI in the same way. As such, any global discussion about the future of AI must be cross-cultural. The more we understand what each culture “means” by AI the more fruitful the collaborative design of AI can be. The seminar is suggested for students of Interactive Media Arts, Computer Science, Political Science, Philosophy, and anyone interested in algorithmic art, automation, machine vision, computational economics, and geopolitics. We will read and discuss 10 key texts and students will prepare an original project, paper or hybrid. Prereq: WAI Fulfillment: IMA/IMB elective.
Through weekly performing, readings and discussions, students study the conceptualization and production of live electronics ensemble performance. Students create new works, improvisations, and rehearse compositions from a growing repertoire of electronic ensemble compositions, to be performed at a semester’s end public concert.
This course provides a high-level overview of the key ideas and technologies that lead to revolutionary changes in Artificial Intelligence and to the explosive growth in practical applications of AI. Taught by a team of NYU’s top experts in artificial intelligence lead by the Turing award winner Yann LeCun, the course will introduce students to a range of topics in fundamentals of AI and its key sub-areas including machine learning, natural language processing, computer vision as well as its applications in different domains.
The purpose of this course is to enable the student to gain a heightened awareness, appreciation, and knowledge of dance through movement and performance. We focus on the foundations of dance such as control, aesthetics, alignment, dynamics, athleticism, musicality, use of space, development of learning strategies within a group context, and personal, artistic expression. The students exploration of their creativity, expression and concepts, as well as their work on other dancer’s bodies is part of the work of this course. Through individual and collective kinesthetic participation in unfamiliar patterns, the student is physically and conceptually challenged and informed. Students will be asked to problem solve as homework assignment and in-class composition exercises. Dance experience is recommended, but formal dance training is not required.
The purpose of this course is to enable the student to gain a heightened awareness, appreciation, and knowledge of dance through movement and performance. We focus on the foundations of dance such as control, aesthetics, alignment, development of strength and flexibility, dynamics, athleticism, musicality, use of space, development of learning strategies within a group context, and personal, artistic expression. The student’s mastery of their body, expression with their body and creativity through their body is the center of the work. Through individual and collective kinesthetic participation in unfamiliar patterns, related, but not limited to China, West Africa, United States, and Japan, the student is physically and conceptually challenged and informed. Using these learned dances as inspiration, students go on to re interpret, improvise and choreograph their own variations on dance forms in their class assignments. Dance experience is not necessary.
In this course, students will be exposed to different qualitative research methodologies and disciplinary approaches to those methods (in terms of technique, ethical standards, approaches to citation, etc.). Students will practice using research methods to study subjects of their choosing and produce reflections, sketches, or prototypes based on weekly research findings. By practicing the act of “doing research” students will think about ways to incorporating research into their practice and better understand and articulate how research is already part of their practice.
Today’s internet, made up of mostly text documents and two-dimensional images and videos, is the result of historical limitations in bandwidth, graphics processing and input devices. These limitations have made the internet a place where the mind goes, but the body cannot follow. Recent advances in motion capture devices, graphics processing, machine learning, bandwidth and browsers, however, are paving the way for the body to find its place online. This course will explore embodied interactions in the browser and across networks. Specifically, we’ll explore TensorFlow.js models like PoseNet and BodyPix, and Microsoft Kinect in p5.js and Three.js. Assignments will consider designing engaging embodied experiences for individual and social interactions online. Experience with Node, HTML and JavaScript is helpful but not required. ICM level programming experience is required. The course will have weekly assignments that explore embodied interaction online. Assignments will begin with exploring single points of interaction (i.e. one mouse or one joint), and progress to considering full bodies and multiple bodies in one browser. Students will have a 2-3-week final project with which they will delve more deeply into the subject matter in one piece of work. Students will have readings/watchings focused on embodied and networked user experience. Some influential works that will likely be assigned/discussed are Laurie Anderson’s “Habeas Corpus,” Todd Rose’s “The End of Average,” and Myron Krueger’s “Artificial Reality.” The course examples will be taught in Javascript using web technologies/frameworks. However, students are welcome to work in their preferred medium.
Juxtaposed to traditional comics, Experiential Comics combines emergent tech, unconventional comic book art/structure, and game engines to offer users a more immersive, continuous storyworld experience. Challenging the status quo of classic and contemporary digital comics, students will explore new technologies/world-building techniques better suited to craft innovative comic book narratives and formats –worthy of the Fourth Industrial Revolution. Students will ingest a brief history of classic and digital comics formats, collaborate with comic book artists to design engrossing characters, engage in world-building sessions, play with Unity/Unreal engines to generate avatars/ virtual environments, work with actors in motion capture/volumetric capture studios, learn the latest iteration of the Experiential Comics format, and share their unique expressions of Experiential Comics in a final presentation. Throughout a 7-week period, the course will be divided into 7 themes 1) The Disconnection of Digital Comics 2) Classic and Unconventional Comics Continuity 3) Marvel vs DC vs Insert Your Universe Here 4) Fourth Industrial Revolution Technologies 5) Capture & Creation 6) Infinite Engagement and Unlocking Immersive Format 7) Experiential Comics Presentations. Each weekly class will be divided into two halves 1) Exploration of Theme/Discussion 2) Process, Practices, & Play. This course requires CL: Hypercinema or equivalent experience.
Course description (optional): We are currently living in a society that operates under the principle that one body equals one agent, one vantage point, one identity. But emerging technologies may create a future in which the notion of a single personal identity becomes outdated. That future includes: machine learning techniques that make emulating the style and behavior of other people fast and easy; widely available AR/VR headsets that get people to identify with however many faces and bodies they choose, instead of just those they were born with; cryptocurrencies enabling the use of pseudonymous economic identities to transact across the planet in a permissionless manner. This is a course where we will get to explore and anticipate the utopian and dystopian aspects of this weird future of identity.
This course will provide students with an introduction to the area of machine listening. Machine listening is the general field studying algorithms and systems for audio understanding by machine. It deals exclusively with general audio as opposed to speech recognition. The most basic goal of all machine listening systems is to reliably recognize and react to very specific sounds. Over the course of the semester, we will create our own unique machine listening systems that provide us with new and interesting ways to interact with our projects. We will use live coding and real-time data visualization to demystify some of the more daunting underlying topics like digital signal analysis, music information retrieval, and machine learning.
Time-based art, performance – and theater most specifically – should be perfect manipulators of experience. Many creators of time-based art look for the “universal” in content and overlook what we all have in common in form: brains. What happens in the minds of all truly happens (what happens in the lobby also truly happens). How can we use art to make our brains experience the same things? What behind-the-scenes work can we employ to manipulate experience. Film scoring works on us in ways we don’t perceive in the moment. Can we pay closer attention to this when making work? Sometimes what we have for lunch effects our experience of art more than the hours of labor that went into the most minuscule of decisions when making that art. Is empathy always ethical? Show don’t tell. How does the art take place in the room in front of us? How can public performance not be awkward? How do we experience a performance rather than watch it.
In an age of pressing and complex problems like climate change, extreme inequality, and surveillance capitalism, “problem solving” is a central feature of innovation, design, and planning. But can these wicked problems actually be “solved”? And why does the cutting edge of problem solving look so limited? Machine learning. Predictive analytics. Algorithmic decision-making…Is planning for the future being outsourced to machines? In this class, we’ll take back control of the future by learning how it has historically been predicted, planned, and produced in board meetings, think tanks, writers’ rooms, and policy circles, and how those methods are being impacted by new technologies. During a series of discussions and hands-on workshops, we will learn specific, tangible, and collaborative practices for prediction and planning that can augment and transcend computational capabilities, making for marketable future-proof skills that can help redefine the future for humanity.
This course will focus on a range of human-centered design research and innovation workshop methodologies including Design Thinking, LEGO Serious Play, Lean UX, Google Ventures Sprints, Gamestorming, Futurecasting, and Service Design. Students will look for design opportunities within the unprecedented challenges that we are currently facing as global citizens. Students will define a problem space based on the drivers that they’re most interested in exploring and will have the option to work alone or form small design research teams. They will learn how to conduct primary and secondary research, creating deliverables such as personas, journey maps, concept canvasses, and prototypes. Students will be required to apply design research approaches and workshop methodologies, develop and test a rapid prototype and then share their work in a final presentation.
Computers are able to understand human speech better than ever before, but voice technology is still mostly used for practical (and boring!) purposes, like playing music, smart home control, or customer service phone trees. What else can we experience in the very weird, yet intuitive act of talking out loud to machines? The goal of this course is to give students the technical ability to imagine and build more creative uses of voice technology. Students will be encouraged to examine and play with the ways in which this emerging field is still broken and strange. We will develop interactions, performances, artworks or apps exploring the unique experience of human and computer conversation. Students will learn how to use text-to-speech and speech-to-text technologies, voice assistant devices, generative text techniques, open speech APIs, Node.js, and conversational UI design. There will be weekly assignments leading up to a final project. ICM or comparable programming experience required.
“Lies. Hoaxes. Conspiracies. Rumors. Propaganda. Fake news is an age-old phenomenon—but the internet is making targeted misinformation cheap and scalable. That is affecting politics, public opinion, and the everyday experience of the internet. In this 6-week class, we will explore the cutting edge of “fake news” by engaging in ethical research and fabrication. Participants will manufacture and observe a controlled “fake news” event. We will experiment with command-line tools for doctoring video, neural nets and deepfakes to fabricate reality, Twitter bots, behavioral psychology, and the dark underbelly of the ad economy.”
Until recently 3D sound was a novelty reserved for special uses and reaching a limited audience, no medium in popular culture has been as inherently dependent upon spatial audio as virtual reality. The widespread and standardized implementation of surround sound in film brought cinema to a new level of immersion, but is limited to theatrical exhibition and home theater systems. Today a considerable amount of content is consumed on mobile devices and laptops which excludes the cinematic experience of spatial sound. With the current rise of cinematic VR and the blurring line between gaming and experiential VR, spatial audio is no longer just an added bonus, but rather a necessity in designing immersive VR experiences. In this course we will explore the emerging field of 3D sound design and for both 360 video and game engine-built VR using a digital audio workstation, Unity, and 3D audio plugins.
This course introduces numerous subject areas in Electrical and Computer Engineering (power systems, electronics, computer networking, microprocessors, digital logic, embedded systems, communications, feedback control, and signal processing). Through a series of case studies and examples, the course demonstrates how each subject area applies to practical, real-world systems and devices and discusses how the areas interact with each other to implement a complete functioning system or device. Students make presentations in teams on case studies based on articles from the IEEE Spectrum Magazine and other sources. The IEEE Code of Ethics and ethics-related issues are discussed. | ABET criteria: i, h. | Prerequisites: First-year standing
This course helps students to understand computer engineering as a balance among hardware, software, applications and theory, the notion of abstraction, computer layers and how they relate to various aspects of computer engineering, implementation of abstract and physical computer layers: Number systems, digital logic, basic processor structure, instruction set architecture, machine languages, assembly languages and high-level programming in C. Other computer concepts, including compilers, operating systems and algorithms, are presented, along with the simulator concept and its usage for understanding computer design, testing and analysis. Experts present special topics in the area. Also discussed are invention, innovation, entrepreneurship and ethics in these topics and in Computer Engineering. Cross listed as CS-UY 1012. | ABET competencies: e, h, j | Prerequisite: Only first-year students are permitted to enrol in this course.
This is a one-semester overview course in chemistry, providing examples of important discoveries and important chemical innovators, with a strong emphasis on cutting-edge research. Field opportunities are developed to allow students to contribute to the discipline. | Prerequisite: Only first-year students are permitted to enroll in this introductory level course.
This unique course introduces students to innovative and cutting-edge technologies sound, video, and interfaces that are changing the way music is performed, produced and received. Music and creative technologies have shifted in the last years from preset-focused black-box devices to open and hackable hard- and software. Examples are MaxMSP (Ableton), the Kinect Motion sensor, VR Platforms or open source music instruments like Korg’s Mono series, little bits or bastl. This shift enables artists today to understand the inner workings of instruments better and engage a very different working process: these days, devices can more easily be created and manipulated, forming future tools and creating a rich variety of different media. The course consists of both a theoretical and a hands-on part, and has a workshop component. No special knowledge like programming or electronic skills is presupposed. As this course is intended for students from different disciplines, the content will flexibly be adapted to the level of knowledge of the students, especially for students with little or no technical background.
Can you listen to Michael Jackson’s “Thriller” without envisioning the zombie transformation? What about Beyonce’s “Single Ladies” without seeing the accompanying choreography? Both of those songs, along with countless others, have benefited from the groundbreaking visuals that have accompanied them. From the Classic Rock films of the 1960’s to the MTV revolution of the 1980’s and 1990’s to the innovations of YouTube and Virtual Reality, this class will examine how the convergence of visual and auditory mediums has created some of the most impactful art. We’ll extract the great lessons from the pieces we study and utilize our production skills to create videos, on-stage visuals, and songs of our own. We’ll also investigate how the creation of videos alongside songs has disrupted the marketing and sales fates for the music industry multiple times. The weekly class structure will alternate between one 90min lecture/discussion course and one 90min production course where we will be collaborating on creating new content for each assignment together.
We live in an age of digital production where so much of today’s music is produced with comparatively few tools, and at the heart of the modern production set up, whether in the bedroom of the studio, is software that uses MIDI. One of the most versatile of today’s platforms which can be used in production, live performance, and even as a visual tool is Ableton Live. Ableton is unique amongst the contemporary software programs making music in that it is the only one that was created by working musicians who were looking for a tool that allowed for both the seamless creation of ideas and could also serve as a performance instrument. In the past 15 years, Ableton has played an important role in creating countless tracks and records in numerous genres and the go-to software for live performance, whether for vocalists and bands or for massive spectacles like Cirque du Soleil. In this course, we will cover Ableton’s unique abilities to manipulate audio which make it the preferred platform for remixing and mash-ups. We will cover the fundamentals of the software, explore techniques to program beats, chordal and melodic ideas, as well as cover creative workflow – how to use Ableton to quickly generate ideas for producers and songwriters. Finally, we will discuss its use as a live performance tool for use with live instrumentalists and vocalists, as a DJ tool and even as a VJing tool.
From Karlheinz Stockhausen and Kraftwerk to D.A.F. and the Euro disco of Snap! – the first seven weeks of class considers the history of German electronic music prior to the Fall of the Wall. We will particularly look at how electronic music developed in Germany before the advent of house and techno in the late 1980s. One focus will be on regional scenes such as the Düsseldorf school of electronic in the 1970s with music groups such as Cluster, Neu! And Can, the Berlin school of synthesizer pioneers like Tangerine Dream, Klaus Schulze and Manuel Göttsching or Giorgio Moroder’s Sound of Munich. Visits will be made to experience Oskar Sala’s Trautonium – an early proto-synthesizer with which he created the sounds for Hitchcock’s The Birds – at the Musikinstrumenten Museum and the location of the Zodiak Free Arts Lab, an experimental club founded by Conrad Schnitzler and Hans-Joachim Roedelius. Students will be expected to competently identify key musicians and recordings of this creative period. The second half of the course looks more specifically at the arrival of Techno, a new musical movement, and new technology in Berlin and Germany in the turbulent years after the Fall of the Berlin Wall, up to the contemporary moment. Indeed, Post-Wall East Berlin, full of abandoned spaces and buildings and deserted office blocks, was the perfect breeding ground for the youth culture that would dominate the 90s and led Techno pioneers and artists from the East and the West to take over and set up shop. Within a short space of time Berlin became the focal point of a new culture, attracting enthusiastic followers from all over the world to clubs such as ‘Tresor’ and ‘E-Werk’. Among those early techno aficionados were writers, artists, photographers, musicians and fashion designers. Techno quickly developed into a lifestyle and mass movement, finding its most exhilarating expression in the Love Parade and, recently, the club/movement Berghain. As students consider Berlin’s slow transformation from divided city in those anarchic and pioneering days of the early 90s into the bustling, world-class nightlife capital it is today, they will also consider the changing and controversial cultural and socio-economic landscape of the city, and how Berlin continues to retain its uncompromising, avant-garde ethos. Students will be expected to write final research paper drawing on issues discussed in class and in the readings.
This advanced experiential production course will introduce students to the latest techniques for stereoscopic 360 video, manual 360 video stitching and depth map creation, camera-paired Depthkit volumetric video, and mixed-format photogrammetry. Techniques introduced in the class will presume some working knowledge of more basic forms of these capture methods as well as how to integrate them into Unity. Alongside an intense technical focus, the course will also deconstruct recent groundbreaking experiential works that utilize similar experimental production designs. The format of each class will combine lectures and workshops with the ultimate goal of introducing students to the expectations demanded by professional productions. All of the techniques introduced are being employed by top experiential creators and creative studios. The course will try to show viable paths for students to engage with immersive media pipelines, at an expert level, with an expanded sense of possibility and inspiration. Topics heavily examined throughout the course include: surveillance, race, socioeconomics, carceral capitalism and technoscience, algorithmic bias and oppression, and post-work societal structures.
What is the relationship between American musician and poet, Gill Scott-Heron and cybernetics? Heron’s “The Revolution Will Not be Televised” was created in hopes to wake-up 1970’s America from complicity in societal oppression to then realize the revolution begins in your mind and something created through active participation, not passive media consumption. While, iterated forms of cybernetics also challenge the notion that “technology [or society] is self-correcting”, through fostering design thinking and systems theory through a meta-scale analysis of computational practices, essentially promoting being an observer of systems through conversation with process and feedback loops. Both ideologies center intention and holistic design within innovation — concepts vital to the equitable well-being of society in a technocratic era. In this course, students will explore the origins and history of the internet and HCI technologies as stemming from hippie communes, counterculture and warfare; survey historical and current social relations in the U.S.; study how these social relations have been replicated and embedded into everyday technologies; and consider potential futures in tandem with rapid technological advancements. We will study the works of pioneering designers and thought-leaders from Norbert Wiener, Stewart Brand, and Victor Papanek to Alondra Nelson and Ruha Benjamin. Phenomena discussed throughout the course range from the power of Black Twitter, the social media revolution of Egypt’s Tahrir Square, to cryptocurrency being used in bail reform. After in-depth historical analysis of societal structures, geo-political dissent, and algorithmic patterns, students will engage with futurism and speculative practices, techno-culture manifestos, and design and systems theory to develop a variety of research-driven projects. We will conclude with using both second-wave cybernetics as a design framework, and an anthropological lens to imagine, innovate and design more equitable technocratic futures. Topics heavily examined throughout the course include: surveillance, race, socioeconomics, carceral capitalism and technoscience, algorithmic bias and oppression, and post-work societal structures.
Generative machine learning models open new possibilities for creating images, videos, and text. This class explores the idea of how artists, designers and creators can use machine learning in their own design process. The goal of this class is to learn and understand some common machine learning techniques and use them to generate creative outputs. Students will learn to use pre-trained models, and train their own models in the cloud using Runway. For each week, we will discuss the history, theory, datasets, application of the machine learning models, and build experiments based on the model. In addition to Runway, we will be using JavaScript libraries like the p5.js, ml5.js, and TensorFlow.js, and software like Photoshop, Unity and Figma. Students are expected to have taken ICM (Introduction to Computational Media), or have equivalent programming experience with Python or JavaScript. A list of ML models we will be covering: Image generation: StylanGAN: https://github.com/NVlabs/stylegan BigGAN: https://github.com/ajbrock/BigGAN-PyTorch Style Transfer Fast-style-transfer: https://github.com/lengstrom/fast-style-transfer Arbitrary-Image-Stylization: https://github.com/tensorflow/magenta/tree/master/magenta/models/arbitrary_image_stylization Semantic Image Segmentation/Synthesis Deeplab: https://github.com/tensorflow/models/tree/master/research/deeplab Sapde-coco: https://github.com/NVlabs/SPADE Image-to-Image Translation: pix2pix: https://phillipi.github.io/pix2pix/ pix2pixHD: https://github.com/NVIDIA/pix2pixHD Text Generation LSTM gpt-2: https://github.com/openai/gpt-2
The ways in which we communicate has changed radically in the last 100 years. As the communication systems we use have increased in complexity, so has the effort it takes to understand how they work. Most of us use protocols like LTE, HTTP, TCP/IP, and BLE every day. We take them for granted, almost like we do the laws of nature. But there are more than the laws of physics, more than techniques of engineering, embedded in the design and implementation of our protocols of communication. To understand their role in our lives, we need to look into the societal and economic contexts in which they came to be. In this class, we will examine communication protocols using Raspberry Pi’s, Arduinos, Software Defined Radios, and other connected devices. We will look closer at organizations like iSOC, ICANN and IEEE to better understand how protocol designs are implemented and standardized. Through readings, research and hands-on work we will build an understanding of how these protocols work, how their designs incorporate the physical, technical, cultural, corporate and political assumptions of the actors behind them. In the first half of the class readings and assignments will help familiarize students with some of the different protocols we rely on every day. In the second half, students will work in groups to investigate a communications protocol and consider its impact from a technical, societal and environmental perspective. Final projects will communicate their findings in whatever form students deem appropriate – explanatory blog posts, physical or digital installations, or even videos and podcasts.
With Machine Learning models are getting smaller, and microcontrollers are getting more computing power, Machine Learning is moving towards edge devices. This class explores the idea of how machine learning algorithms can be used on microcontrollers along with sensor data to build Physical Computing projects. In this class, we will learn about TensorFlow Lite, a library that allows you to run machine learning algorithms on microcontrollers. We will talk about common machine learning algorithms and techniques and apply them to build hands-on interactive projects that enrich our daily lives. Students will learn to use pre-trained models, and re-train the models with sensor data. We are going to talk about Image Classification, Transfer Learning, Gesture and Speech Detection. For each topic, we will first discuss its history, theory, datasets, and applications, and then build simple experiments based on the topic. Prospective students are expected to have taken Introduction to Physical Computing and Introduction to Computational Media course, or have equivalent programming experience with Arduino and JavaScript.
Introduction to Critical Mapping and Open Source Geospatial Web Analysis and Visualization is an introduction to critical perspectives in cartography and geospatial information systems and web technologies. This course will introduce students to the foundations of geographic data analysis and visualization, grounding practical studio based exercises and projects with critical readings and theory. Students taking this course will gain an appreciation for geographic thinking, learn to ask geographic questions, and apply basic methodologies to “make sense” of geographic data. The course will be conducted with open source geographic information systems and web technologies. Students are not expected to enter the class with knowledge of these tools, but will be expected to learn and apply them through studio exercises and project briefings.
Autonomous Artificial Artists (AAA) is a class to explore ways of making artworks “autonomous.” In this context, “autonomy” brings together three independent but related criteria: 1) artificial intelligence being a primary determinant in an artwork’s aesthetics 2) autonomous software principles culled from peer-to-peer network design, blockchain and decentralization technology, serverless and federated machine learning, cryptoeconomics, and agent-based multiplayer simulation. 3) crowd-sourced art where mass, unbounded cooperation of many participants creates novel artworks which represent the “hive mind” or collective input. The goal of this class is to learn a little bit about each of these seemingly disparate fields, and see how they may interact in interesting new ways. The idea of autonomous artworks is very new, and is being actively discussed by a small group of interdisciplinary researchers and artists since 2016/2017. Although the topic is highly experimental, it is nevertheless based on concrete technologies, making simultaneous use of several techniques which are under active development and have potentially far-reaching ramifications well outside the domain of art. The time is ripe for people within more design-oriented fields to begin thinking about how they might be used in a broader context. The class has both a theoretical component (learning about each of the individual technologies and their interplay) as well as a practical component: training and deploying generative models on computational environments that are as close to decentralized or autonomous as possible. In addition, we will explore prior notions of crowd-sourced or mass-collaborative art, touching on older principles and strategies such as Oulipo, exquisite corpse, and crowd-sourced computational artworks like Electric Sheep, Exhausting a Crowd, and others.
Over 7 weeks students in this course will explore different game mechanics, puzzle mechanics, group dynamics, and narrative structures and work in groups to design and build a room sized escape game. We will explore how to design immersive and participatory experiences through play and problem solving. Students will construct weekly puzzles and narratives and in the final week build and operate an “escape room” experience. Prerequisites: Physical Computing and ICM. Comfort with fabrication strongly encouraged.
Light Emitting Diodes or LEDs are used creatively all around us. They have the ability to emit light at different colors and intensities instantly and from very tiny points. How can we make creative visual works out of these amazing devices? What construction methods can we use to make those works reliable? Big LEDs will cover the process of designing large LED systems. We will cover LED array hardware and how to map pixels from computer generated media onto them. We will go through every major part of the hardware – different styles of LED arrays, drivers and gateways, cables, data protocols, and how to safely power all of them. We will learn to use the pixel mapping softwares Enttec ELM and Madmapper. We will also cover the paperwork needed to furnish a professional LED installation, including drafting riser diagrams, plan, section, and elevation views, creating a bill of materials, and writing instructions for users and installers. This year’s final project will be a site-specific LED sculpture installed in a public space at 375 Jay St. The installations will be able to display student chosen media that can be viewed for one minute. Students will work either in groups or alone and can choose from one of four installation options to present on: – A prepared square section of 2.0mm pitch LED video tiles (approx 256px x 256px, 2’-6” x 2’-6”) – A prepared low-resolution sculpture with diffused linear elements (approx 500px, 2’-6” x 5’-0” overall) – A student conceptualized LED video tile project – A student conceptualized low-resolution project Because of this year’s pandemic, unprecedented changes have come to the professional world of LED installations. As a result, we will be using remote tools such as networked-based cameras, remote desktop applications, and virtual private network connections to watch and operate the final projects. We will spend class time setting these tools up together. The two prepared options for the final project will be installed and maintained by the instructor.
This class will apply a product and service design lens to the rapidly evolving role of technology in politics, government services, and human rights, with a dual focus on the use of technology to advance the public good, and the threats that technology can pose to various aspects of civil society. On the one hand, there has been an explosion of technology tools that aim to promote healthy and peaceful democracies, provide more efficient government services, and promote human rights. This course will survey those efforts and the product design methodologies that guide them. On the other hand, 2018 has been a reckoning year for technology all over the world. The post-mortem of the 2016 US Presidential election shined a light on technology’s role in a promulgating a deeply polarized electorate, enabling election-meddling from foreign actors, and profiligating fake news, while also raising deep concerns about data privacy and security for everyday citizens. Meanwhile, new technologies like AI and Blockchain are poised to have deeply transformative effects on multiple aspects of society – from policing to education to financial services. This course will also explore the risks various technologies can pose to privacy, safety, liberty, and well-being. The course will feature guest speakers from leading practitioners in the space. Potentially including the ACLU, Higher Ground Labs, Elucd (YC17), NYU Better Policing Initiative, Microsoft, and more.
Stereo (2-speaker) sound is the default way we produce and distribute most audio. This class challenges the stereophonic-centricity of digital sound and instead focuses on the context of listening, interfacing and interacting with audio beyond 2 speakers. We will take a novel approach to spatialization by interfacing web technologies (Javascript, Web Audio, WebRTC) with multichannel audio to create room-scale interactive music and sonic spaces, and then make our findings publicly available through musical artifacts, open source tools, and documentation. We will explore conventional and unconventional loudspeaker arrangements ranging from 3 to 40 channels and how distribution and context affects music. Together, we will participate in a semester-long project examining the affordances of spatial and multichannel sound, designing and build open source tools to interface Tone.js, Higher-Order Ambisonics (HOA) and other multichannel techniques. Students will perform/install their final on the 40-channel speaker array at Dave&Gabe’s studio in Bushwick. Topics include 3D sound, open source, space and listening. Prerequisites: willingness to listen critically, some programming experience. No formal music training required.
In this course, students will learn the process of developing products that address user needs. Students will go through the process of identifying a user need, developing a product prototype, evaluating the product with the target user, and outlining the next development steps. Topics will include such elements as need finding, archetype development, user journey maps, ideation, prototyping, user evaluation and validation.
How do you process data from connected devices? This class examines how to build systems to collect, process, store, and visualize data from connected devices. The class will review and discuss real world IoT systems using case studies and actual projects. We will build system using Arduino hardware and open source software. We will discuss how to IoT systems are built on commercial cloud infrastructure. Students will learn about IoT devices and the data pipelines for processing data. They will build an Arduino based device to send and receive data over WiFi via MQTT. Students will write code to move data from MQTT into a database. Students will learn how to query the database and present data as tabular data and graphs. To gain an understanding of an entire IoT system from device to application, we will start at a high level and then drill into each of the pieces — we will: * Discuss sensor hardware and wireless options (WiFi, Cellular, LoRaWAN, LTE-M, etc) for moving data to the server * Discuss transport options MQTT, CoAP, AMQP, HTTPS, etc. * Examine SQL, NoSQL, and Time Series Database * Look at tools and techniques for querying and visualizing data. Prerequisite: * Introduction to Physical Computing * Introduction to Computational Media (suggested) The class will be a mix of lecture, discussion, and building IoT systems. Real world examples and case studies will be used to demonstrate how IoT can be built.
The class will focus on the many overlooked aspects of paper, and how it can be used as a three-dimensional material. We will learn the disciplines of making Pop-Ups, Origami, Paper Crafting, and Visual Design. Using these methods as a starting point, students will build prototypes to explore new ways to tell stories, inform, interact, play with, engage, and challenge a younger audience. Most classes are hands – on. The rest, dedicated to criticism (including from children), analysis, and refinement, technical and conceptual. We will discuss how they could be mass produced and distributed. Students will build three prototypes, during the semester. From these, each student will select a favorite to fully develop as the final.
What do WhatsApp and Nelson Mandela have in common? How about Mr. Robot and the UN Council for Human Rights? When most people think “digital security”, they rarely think of these connections; but the connections are there. Digital security is much more than an industry buzzword— it encompasses techno-social idealism, open source development, and symbiotic coordination between sectors in tech, the humanities, and civic society. Certainly, we’re going to talk about Signal, Tor, VPNs, and OTR. But let’s dig even deeper. In this course, students will learn the principals of digital security; from end-to-end encryption, to circumvention technology, resilient communications, and beyond. Part lab exploration, part oral history, and part prototyping workshop, students will come away with the tools they need to undertake development projects with end-user security in mind; and foster an appreciation for digital security’s integral, timely, and often life-saving role in human rights struggles across the globe.
Magic windows that allow us to peek into different realities without leaving our physical space, lenses that reveal hidden layers of objects or navigating new universes within the same room. More than ever, mobile devices are getting a human-scale understanding of space and motion allowing us to create more intimate interactions with our surrounding spaces, leveraging them as a canvas to experience other realities. We now have the potential to give life to inanimate objects, tell stories through space, customizing private views of public spaces and recognize places we’ve never been. We’ll question what it means and how can we blend reality exploring themes such as: augmented space and new paradigms in social interaction, public space and privacy; storytelling and navigating the physical space like turning pages in a book; tangible interfaces, mixed objects and animism; Magic windows, x-ray vision, time-machines and impossible universes; Far away so close: telepresence and remote collaboration. The course will survey the past, current and up and coming technologies and experiences in Mixed Reality including environmental augmented reality and interactive projection mapping, handheld devices while fostering a strong user experience perspective on the affordances and constraints of each. We’ll research and discuss the design principles and guidelines for creating mixed reality experiences focusing on the links between real and virtual objects, interaction space and asymmetries between physical and digital worlds, environmental semantics and multimodal and tangible interaction. Technologies explored will be focusing on mobile platforms (phones, tablets) including Vuforia, SLAM, image and object recognition, depth sensing, projection mapping. Unity3D will be the development platform: students must have previous working knowledge of Unity3D and feel comfortable with independently developing using this platform. A working knowledge of Unity3D may be gained by going through the Unity 5 3D Essential Training Lynda Course prior to the course (log in to Lynda for free via https://www.nyu.edu/lynda).
We’ve been tinkering with the living systems that generate our foodstuffs for millennia. But climate change is radically and rapidly shifting these food landscapes, and the impacts include the extinction of many of the foods we love: chocolate, wine, beer, coffee and more importantly starvation for those in the world who are already food insecure. In this class, we’ll explore biotechnologies and bioengineering along with microbes and mushrooms to design and create pathways for the restoration of some of the damage we’ve wrought on our food system. We’ll also use art and design and systems thinking to build speculative and actionable projects that will focus not just on the future of food but the future of our planet and all of its inhabitants. This class is part of the Biodesign Challenge.
Web browsers were originally used only for displaying simple HTML pages, but over the years they have become supercharged all-powerful web execution machines. In this class we’ll explore experimental new features and HTML5 APIs that allow browsers to communicate with the OS and their environment. APIs that will be covered may include: Battery Status, Geolocation, notifications, accelerometer usage, video access, speech recognition, and text-to-speech. We’ll cover the mechanics of bookmarklets and Chrome extensions, with a sustained multi-week focus on building extensions and exploring Chrome’s extensions APIs. Class workshops will include projects such as building an ad blocker, programmatically replacing text and images on a website, and making sites that respond to external events. Students will give weekly in-class presentations on web capabilities, complete small weekly assignments, and present a final project. This class leans heavily on web technologies, and experience with HTML, CSS and modern JavaScript (ICM with p5.js or Commlab Web/Networked Media) is required.
The medium of motion pictures will be will be transformed by virtual reality technologies. But the emerging hybrid form will likely have less to do with the iconic VR headset and immersion, than in the newly possible flow of expression in the other direction, out of the participant. This class looks at the true potential of virtual reality as its mutability, to put ordinary users in the role of director of visual media as they already are in their dreams and fantasies. Democratizing media by breaking it down into discrete more easily remixable parts has historically, from DNA to alphabets to movable type led to an explosion of expression and knowledge creation. Motion pictures, perhaps our most convincing medium, is now undergoing such a transformation thanks to virtual reality technologies. Specifically, we will look at how tools like depth cameras, motion capture, and machine learning can treat a scene as a collection of elements instead of a collection of pixels. We will work with the real-time 3D rendering capabilities available, even in your phone, for the instant contrivance of visual reality using compositing, the transformation of images and models as well as virtual camera moves. The class will also consider how the more conceptual dissection of film by cinema scholars and psychologist into things like plots and character types might be templated into reusable formulas for non-experts to create an emotionally satisfying dramatic arcs.
Iteration and its impact on your creative process is the theme of this class. The format of the course turns its head on the traditional class structure and instead of focusing on syllabus that builds to a final project, the course is focused on a daily, iterative practice. Students will identify a theme, idea or topic they would like to explore over the course of 100 days and must commit to making or producing a variation on that idea and posting social evidence of their work every day for 100 days. Projects can focus on building, writing, drawing, programming, photographing, designing, composing or any creative expression. In parallel to the making, in-class lectures will examine the work of artists whose work has been defined by iteration and discuss the role of discipline and routine in the creative process.
You live with illusions. The nature of these illusions has long been described in mystical practices but is now increasing corroborated by modern research such as neuroscience, behavioral economics, social psychology, embodied cognition, and evolutionary psychology. What does this have to do with computational media? With technology, we have the ability to revisit some of these vestigial illusions that made sense in ancient environments but that might limit our personal happiness or the overall functioning of modern society. Will the computer’s ability to run more objective statistical analysis on data gathered tirelessly over time, across individuals and locations allow us to more accurately see ourselves and the world as it is. Can we build computer interfaces that give a fuller expression of our experience when we are not limited by an illusory view of ourselves? The insights into how into how to reach people more fully comes with a responsibility to then ask what should say to them. As the computers are able to understand us better than we understand ourselves will we relinquish control to them? At a practical level, the class looks at interfaces for digitizing signals from the less consciously controlled parts of your body using things like biosensors and cameras. It then moves on to opportunities for finding insights in from patterns in the mounds of already digitized expression you have produced every day for years, for instance in your email. Then we look at the possibility of bypassing consciousness with techniques like subliminal priming to affect behavior. Finally, we will look at how we can use things like browser extensions to manipulate shared media in an attempt to counter some filter bubble effects that emerge at a group level based on the illusions discussed in this class. This class will use skills from Physical Computing and ICM.
This 7-week, 2-point course will provide a framework for learning how to develop and program web applications. It will focus on server side development using JavaScript, Node.js with the Express framework, and persistent databases on cloud based infrastructure. Additional topics will include login and session management, web services and APIs, and will lightly touch on front-end web development. The course will be a mixture of lecture and in-class collaborative coding, with weekly programming and reading homework.
As a response to developing technologies, artists working in areas of new/digital media are continually inventing new concepts for self-expression – interactivity, the passage of time and resolution, just to name a few. Yet these concepts are new only in the sense that they are being adapted to new media. For example, the notion of interactivity, frequently observed as original and specific to the user-interaction component of computer-mediated works, was equally, if differently, specific to Gianlorenzo Bernini’s 17th-century Baroque sculpture and architecture. Indeed the very concept of new media, and the concomitant implication of critically significant artistic development, applies throughout history. Oil revolutionized painting in the Renaissance, as did house-paint (on canvas) in the 1950s; in the 1910s, the found object indelibly altered definitions of art, the importance of the object being subsumed by that of the concept in the 1960s. This course examines how artists working before the boom of digital technology utilized other media, techniques and approaches to effect formal, conceptual and experiential dynamics comparable to those being investigated by new media artists today. The objective of the course is to provide students with not only knowledge of the immensely rich history of artistic creativity, but also a platform through which that knowledge might be utilized to reconsider new media strategies of artistic expression. It is the goal that through observation, discussion, reading and projects (both written and hands-on), students acquire mental tools to approach their own work with an expanded understanding of artistic possibility. Organized thematically, each class focuses on a different concept derived from the field of new media production and examined with regard to artistic precedents. The course focus primarily, though not exclusively, is on 20th/21st-century art. It is conducted as a combination lecture/discussion class. Critical theory is incorporated into the readings and discussions, but this is not strictly a theory course. The course has been conceptualized and designed to enhance understanding through a variety of means, from basic observation, to exploratory conversations, to more rigorous thinking informed by lectures, readings and focused discussions.
Code without content gets boring fast. This seven week course will show you how to create stories around which you can weave the technology learned in other classes. When content comes first, interesting problems arise to solve. Participants will get solid grounding in how to tell a visual story using words and images in a traditional format, so then they can take that format and reimagine it in entirely new and unique ways. The first few classes are devoted to getting basic comic skills. The remaining classes will hone and expand these abilities while posing the question: what can be done differently, and how can technology add to what we have created? At the end of the semester you will have a something that sets you apart; – original content AND technological know how. Students will combine words and images, look at each other’s work, look at examples of published works. Reimagine how these stories can be told in new and unique ways. This a demanding course. There is a lot of work involved, they will end up with a lot of original content. During the first half we look at and make traditional comics. Second half we experiment with comic format WHILE honing storytelling skills. Relevant speakers will come in to discuss what they do and how they work etc.
Assistive technology is a term that includes a wide variety of technologies for people with disabilities. This two-point survey course is designed to provide students with an overview of the field of assistive technology. Field trips, readings, and guest speakers will provide students with an understanding of current research and development as well as processes used in determining appropriate technologies. Weekly assignments and a final research project. This course satisfies 2 credits of the Experimental Interfaces and Physical Computing Courses category for the IMA major. Prereq: Creative Computing. This course meets once per week.
An introductory course designed to familiarize students with all the IMA prototyping shop has to offer. We will cover everything from basic hand tools to the beginnings of digital fabrication. You will learn to use the right tool for the job. There will be weekly assignments, created to develop your fabrication techniques. There will be in class lectures, demos, and building assignments. Emphasis will be put on good design practices, material choice, and craftsmanship.
“Big Ideas in the History and Future of Technology” is designed to provide students with a critical perspective on current issues in technology in the context of the history, controversies, consequences, and ethical questions in emerging media. This first course in the series includes: in the first half –some seminal early works that imagine a future in which technology enhances/augments human intelligence and capabilities and how that might affect society; in the second half–2 classic works of fiction and some podcasts/ audio lectures that address questions relating to “What is Human.”
As no two cultures define “artificial” the same way, and no two define “intelligence” the same way, so too they will not define and imagine “artificial intelligence” in the same way. As China and the West engage in what is sometimes called a new scientific and technological race, the fundamental terms of a shared conversation across cultures may be missing or contested. As planetary-scale economies shift toward increasing automation, AI moves out of the laboratory and into the fabric of supply-chains, urban infrastructures, and everyday life. This research seminar will allow students to explore different ways that different cultural connotations of “face”, “city”, and “governance”, for example, imply different paths for the development of this fundamental technology. NYU Shanghai will host an international conference in the Spring 2020 that examine these same topics. Prerequisites: Interaction Lab / Application Lab / Communication Lab / What’s New Media
Modern Tabletop Games are undergoing a renaissance, with designers building upon each other’s innovations at a bewildering rate. The cornucopia of concepts in modern boardgaming can be daunting to a newcomer, yet any digital game designer is well advised to familiarize themselves with this parallel world, both to expand their “bag of tricks” and their notion of what a game can be. This class aims to familiarize students with a wide variety of “gateway games”: relatively straightforward exemplars that will give the student a solid foothold when further exploring their respective genre in our extensive library of boardgames. While doing so, we will be discussing related short readings in Characteristics of Games, in order to give the design strategies being engaged a broader context.
3D environments and objects are powerful prototyping tools. This class will introduce the basics of 3D modeling techniques in Rhino and students will learn to create assets for prototyping and 3D printing. The class will take an industrial design approach to design and build with specifications and materials in mind. Students will learn to think, plan, design, and produce well thought out objects to fit their specific needs. (examples: motor mounts, enclosures, wearables etc.)
Whether it’s through photo realistic scans found in current-gen video games or the cartoonish and low-fi aesthetic of Bitmoji there is no limit to ways in which the body and the self are represented in digital spaces. This 2-credit class will look at how avatars have been historically used in the realm of art, commerce, and entertainment and utilize existing avatar creation tools to develop projects that examine identity, body politics, and contemporary performance. In class, we will cover the basics of Unreal Engine, photogrammetry, 3D scanning, and model rigging although students will be encouraged to use existing skill sets and creative thinking to complete some of the smaller week-by-week assignments. The class will culminate with a short performance, small installation or single/multi-channel video piece using one or more of the techniques covered in class. This can be a solo project or a group project. In this class students will: – Explore how avatars can be utilized in your creative practice – Gain an introductory understanding of Unreal Engine, photogrammetry, model rigging, and 3D scanning. – Learn how to recontextualize digital spaces for the purposes of art, installation, and performance. – Broaden your thinking of what performance can be, both in a physical setting and digital setting. – Think critically about how physical bodies inhabit digital spaces and how the hardware and software we use reinforces the acceptance and value of certain kinds of bodies.
This course focuses on the principles and practices of successful interviewing techniques. Students are provided with background on the structure of an interview and learn how to analyze success and/or potential problems. Review of case studies and practice in holding interviews enables students to gain experience and to improve their own abilities.
Students conceive, produce, direct, and edit a short film exploring the Paris experience with smartphone technology. A survey of cellphone cinema history leads to the study of visual storytelling principles and techniques, which students apply through practical exercises. Choosing among available short film genres (experimental, documentary, portrait, essay, fiction), students are trained through every stage of the movie making process: pitching the idea, scripting and storyboarding, shooting, and editing. Each student finishes the course with a facility in smartphone video technology as well as a coherent film record of his or her particular vision of Paris.
A site to help IMA NY students find equivalent courses
For students joining IMA in Fall 2022 and beyond, our new program structure affects the categorization of courses on this site.
Classes listed in the “IMA Major Electives” categories refer to the old IMA program structure. If you’re under the new IMA program structure, these courses count as general IMA Electives for you. Your program structure is noted on your academic advising spreadsheet.
Students on the new program structure can search the Interchange for courses. If you’re looking for “IMA Major Distribution” courses, you'll find them listed here: